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 Sorcerer: Interesting Times by BJohn
   Chapters 11-15 BJohn36@verizon.net
   Chapter 11
   ANA (Saturday 7/15)
   We were keeping a pretty close eye on Frank, Thelma and Mary.  For now,
it was simply data gathering.  There were no strange side effects any of us
could see, and with their ability to control the areas to be regenerated or
repaired, we seemed to have a handle on it.
   What with the internal filters, detoxification processes and the ability
to pop up a full-isolation body shield, we were in pretty good shape.  None
of us so far had really needed much; the newer ones of us were in
relatively good shape or were getting themselves that way -- part of the
standard training.
   Since the Skunk Works had moved into the JRD building, the lab was
pretty quiet.  We were keeping the animals going to live out what lifespan
they had; we kept checking them for oddities, too.  So far, there was
nothing beyond apparent excellent health.
   That didn't leave us much to do for R&D.  We didn't want to shut the
place down, though.  What with the Skunk Works making progress on the Moon
Base language and the possibility of bringing at least part of the place
back to "normal," we were standing by.
   Our own research team (Mary, Sam, Oscar, Karen and me) had tracked down
lots of medical facilities in the Moon Base; at least that's what they
appeared to be to us.  There were probably 200 or so small clinics
scattered throughout the three main complexes, and five major hospitals in
the living/admin area.  If they weren't clinics and hospitals, we had no
other idea what they could be.
   It did look really interesting.  We'd warmed up what appeared to be
several anatomy books and checked out the alien anatomy.  Beyond a minor
difference in body shape (three fingers and a thumb), they were just like
us Homo sapiens.  Probably two sexes, heart, lungs, digestive tracts,
genitals and that sort of stuff.  Internal diagrams of pregnant females
showed a live birth; there were a couple "laymen" pamphlets or something
showing the entire cycle.
   There were several diagnostic(?) and treatment(?) machines in each
clinic along with what looked like standard medical stuff like scissors,
stethoscopes, probes and the like that covered the gamut.  Didn't see
anything we could consider to be an auto-doctor right off, though we could
well be mistaken.  Especially in the hospitals, there was lots of equipment
about which we were clueless.  Maybe after we crack the language we'd find
out.
   Anyway, that was all extra-curricular to some extent.  I was still
running the Probe Patrol every other week on one of the JRD companies. 
Ramontheeye was relatively busy with ten or fifteen queries a day.  All
routine stuff so far.  We kept a real close eye out for any interest in the
Clanns; Frank and Thelma ran through every probe result from anywhere just
to keep an eye out.
   With the every-other-week schedule we'd thought up earlier for the
audits and probes, it would take us until February next year to finish up.
Given the people resources we'd had then, it had made sense.
   Once school was out on June 14, the situation changed a bit.  The audit
team had all been students in school, so once school had been out, they
could put in more time.  After a quick meeting or so and a consensus, I
scheduled a company per week for the audits with the probe run done the
week after the audit started.  The JRD boss had given me the audit team to
run as well as the Probe Patrol.
   Even with "losing" Henry, Pat and Val to the Skunk Works, we still had
an experienced audit team with Steven, Lucia, Janet, Bellana and Leone. 
So, one a week wasn't an issue there.  When Leone got hot and heavy into
their recordings (yeah!), they had it a bit harder, but they could still do
side-checks of anything odd or suspicious with Aaron or Barbara.
   Running the Probe Patrol every week wasn't an issue; there were lots of
spirits willing and able.  Even with a couple ramontheeye personnel on
standby 24/7, we still had plenty of spirits.
   Dayum!  Once the heavy Clann expansion started, we started getting a
flood of people!  A routine probe of someone was part of the standard
training, but dossier probing in a team was a different ball game.
   Things got a bit hairy for a bit, but I kept scheduling every new person
into at least one experienced team for at least one run -- after I'd
ensured they could do the remote transcription and had drilled the
data-gathering checklists.  Of course, it didn't matter where they were
physically, we could get them into at least one shift.
   With a probe run a week, there was plenty to keep us busy.  Most
companies had a couple hundred staff so that only took two or three shifts.
Since the audit had already been done, we knew the major customers and ran
surveys on them, too.
   Security Plus in Oakland, however, was a biggie; since they made
security equipment, we did everyone.  At 3,000 staff and 500 major
customers, it took several days to get things run and analyzed.  No
difference in the way it was done, just a matter of quantity.
   I beefed up the audit team with a couple of the new people, and it was
running fine.  It had a lady from Arizona and one from Las Vegas.  No
problem with commuting once they'd done the teleportation checklist.  Grin.
   Enough business!  Our Babies Within were pooching my tummy out nicely
now.  Not quite enough for maternity clothes yet, but Real Soon Now.  Then
again, with the hologram tech bulletin out, I didn't need them.  That won't
stop me from shopping and looking, though!
   Dayum, I was horny all the time.  Don was doing his best to keep up, but
we'd had to import several independent consultants for emergency work. 
Hehehehe.
   The Guerreros were working out just fine.  Ramon and Elisa (yeh, I stole
him for a couple hours one day) were coming up twice a week for classes. 
Linda and Alejandro were getting an extensive education in Burbank-style
U.S.  culture and were doing great!  They spent a good deal of time with
PVC and the Wild Bunch with studying and other "educational" activities, so
I didn't see them around the house much during the day.
   ------
   BOB
   Saturday evening, we had Rose Baer and her husband Henry over for
dinner. We hadn't met Henry before but hopefully made him feel welcome. 
With what Kathleen had planned later for him (courtesy of some prior hints
from Rose), I hoped he'd feel *very* welcome.
   We popped over to Tahoe for dinner.  We had a great time depleting the
buffet while we eyed each other in anticipation.
   Rose was going to be working with several of the JRD companies on
setting up or updating the training departments.  We were gonna start her
out at Vail then work through the rest of the companies as we got done with
the audits, probes and oversight visits.
   We figured maybe a week or two to get the department established, a
supervisor and assistant trained and books in the door.  The supervisor and
assistant would study The Book (and start on the detail manuals) and drill
being a supervisor then they'd be ready to start up the course room.
   Yeh, we were requiring the main executives for each company to go to a
Sean seminar.  With the policy implementation coming down from JRD through
them, we wouldn't have any issues in getting the staff to know they *were*
being implemented.  Might have issues with cultural acceptance and
compliance, but that was part of the supervisor training.  We figured
several months to get the high-level policies established and another year
to get the business processes and procedures adjusted.  Lookin' good!
   Rose and the other summer instructors would spend two to three days at
each place training the supervisors then go on to the next site.  Once we
had the supervisors in place, the instructor trainers would make another
pass through to help open the course room and get the first several
students going well.  That was the plan, at least.
   Henry worked at Disney.  As he said, "Nothing fancy.  Just a planner in
the toy division." He planned the manufacturing for the stuffed animals
being sold in the retail stores.  Might not sound like much, but the line
was constantly changing along with the demand.  It did take some fancy
stepping to get it right; the main hurdle was the salesmen's forecasts. 
"80% exaggerate, and the other 20% just guess.  That makes the demand
forecast maybe 50% accurate."
   Fortunately, the plant could change a setup pretty quickly and pump out
stuffed pets pretty quickly.  Something like 10,000 a day wasn't unusual
for most of the small-animal lines.  The main hurdle on all that was the
lead time to get fabrics in the right color and texture.  The stuffing and
accessories like eyes were pretty much universal items so they could keep
them in raw material stock fairly easily.
   Back home, we chatted about McCambridge, the Clanns and the families. 
Their daughter Janine and her SO were active in Clann Reynolds -- they were
an enhancement team -- and were doing extremely well.
   Kat grinned and told them, "We'll be seeing Janine and Tod in the near
future." Yeh, I'll be the last to know.
   I asked Henry, "How are you on the rest of the manufacturing operations?
We'll be needing quite a few operations mangers of various sorts in these
new companies."
   "Well, I'm an APICS CPIM and have some 15 years of supply chain
experience." [APICS = Association for Operations Management; a non-profit
educational association.  CPIM = Certified in Production & Inventory
Management; mainly for manufacturing but applicable to any company.]
   We immediately got him together with Mercy; she was now our CEO for the
Skunk Works.  No manufacturing company yet, but she was gonna be
coordinating that, too, for now.  She could probably use at least another
consultant besides Roy.  Henry and Roy knew each other through APICS.
   In the honoring room, Rose was a hot lady!  She told me, "I've had my
eye on you for almost four years now; I hope you're rested."
   I was.  It was a Real Good Thing, too, because she made my poke spot
sore!
   We _peeked_ at Kat and Henry; she'd dressed up like a cheerleader with
the short skirt and everything.  Rose laughed, "Yep, thought he'd like
that. He always paid lots of attention to the cheerleaders at the school
games.  I've nailed him a couple times like that myself."
   While our bodies (finally!) slept, the four of us ended on a quick tour
of the Moon Base (Linda City?).  Of course Henry drooled over the
manufacturing area.  He told us, _"Roy and I are going to have a real good
time with this.  Just at first glance, it probably produces an entire range
of products from shirt buttons up to freighters.  Much more interesting
than stuffed animals!"_
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Sunday 7/16)
   Henry was a very nice man.  He got a really good laugh (and response) to
my cheerleader outfit.  Too bad I hadn't been able to find any panties to
go with it -- at least the outfit wasn't pumpkin orange like some of
Kathleen's stuff had been.
   Neither Rose nor Henry had anything pressing for Sunday, so we took them
with us back to the Bronx to check out the concert.  There was still lots
of activity going on for the set up.  The Lead Engineer told us, "Normal.
Performers have their prima donnas; rock bands have their stage managers
and orchestras have their conductors.  They're all usually a bit nuts."
   We had several hours before the concert started, so we made a trip to
the island.  Henry had gone to college on Long Island so was pretty
familiar with Manhattan.  We had a tour guide!
   He told us, "While we could port all over the place, it's probably much
easier to take one of the bus tours.  You can get a pretty decent flavor of
the place that way."
   Actually we ended up on a three-hour boat tour that went all around the
island.  It was cooler on the water than in the city, and we got a nice
look at many places we'd heard of before.
   All right!  Back to the concert.  We appeared in the main studio trailer
about fifteen minutes before the scheduled start time.  From all the gauges
and the talk inside, they were ready.
   There were something like fifteen microphones scattered around the
orchestra, stage and audience.  The LE told us, "It'll all fall out in the
mixing.  We use different tracks at different times; totally depends on the
quality.  The mikes are fine, but it's not really appropriate to have some
musician's foot stomping in the final.  Usually we end up with a
combination of tracks from all over the place.  It's all up to the mixing
editors."
   Well, they rolled right on time.  From what I could figure out, they
were recording both to tape and directly to digital on a hard disk (or two
or three).  The lights blinked, the meters jiggled and the engineers
smiled, so we figured everything was going well.
   Okay, we just listened to the concert for a while.  The LE said, "These
usually finish up right up on time, and people leave pretty quickly.  That
lets us get our equipment down, packed and us out of here at a decent time.
Some of the rock stuff often runs over 45 minutes to an hour, and the
audience seems to hang around forever -- probably half of them are wasted
anyway."
   Ah, well.  It wasn't dance music so we drifted off into the Bronx.  The
concert was in the park right across E.  161st Street from Yankee Stadium.
That meant we could sneak in and have our own ball game, right?
   It was locked up tight, but it didn't stop us, of course.  The four of
us played spirit-baseball for a while; we laughed while Bob struck out and
cheered as Rose slid into home plate.  We women won, of course!
   Plenty of eating places around.  We had a little snack, looked at the
sights (looked like a city to us) and chased away a couple gang members who
thought they'd found some easy pickings.  Having a 50% loss in hearing and
sight coupled with arms and legs which could barely move meant they
wouldn't be hassling anyone else for a good week.  Too bad.
   We'd killed enough time, so Bob and I went back to the concert while
Rose and Henry took off back home.  Really *nice* people!
   As the LE had thought, the concert ended up right on time.  The people
streamed out -- probably some would eat at the same place we did -- and we
watched the crew pull down the equipment and pack it away.
   The LE told us, "Well, that's all the fun for now.  This one was a
no-brainer.  The editors and mixers will start chewing on it tomorrow."
   It took maybe a half hour to get everything packed up and the crew on
the road back home.  Not too shabby.
   Bob and I ported back downtown to Broadway and watched the theater
crowds strut around for a while.  Well, I guess we're the country bumpkins
from California because we weren't at all interested in putting on a show
to impress someone else.
   ------
   BOB (Monday 7/17)
   We popped over to NYC and opened up the safe deposit box in the bank. 
Dayum, another pile of deeds, titles, collectibles and the like.  We
grabbed a few papers for looks and ported the rest home -- the $300K in
cash, 20 gold bars and 15 platinum bars went to our stash.  The stash was
getting a bit full; maybe create a larger one?
   Kat closed out the box since it was empty.  No sweat.  We popped over to
the Arizona bank and made the show of checking that box then closed it out,
too.  The temps had plenty more to do, so at least they wouldn't be bored.
   We had a good talk with Evin about progress.  We showed him Mario's map
with the JRD, RRK and our properties marked.  He was interested and told
us, "There's plenty more floating around.  How about we give this to the
guys and let them keep it up to date?  I'll grant that Las Vegas, Dallas
and Albuquerque would probably be decent manufacturing centers.
   "On the other hand, I know we've found some property in Long Beach,
probably near these." He pointed out a couple data points.  "For really big
stuff, we might need the ocean-going shipping.  Depends on where we're
delivering.  We'll probably need some balance between public appearances
and simply porting several thousand tons of something to someone's
doorstep."
   Yeh.  We'll always have some balancing to do.  From what we'd heard from
Eileen about their seminars, they'd put on a simple facade.  Their entire
shipping cost for all their materials was around $500 -- which went to
Reynolds Construction.  Grin.
   We'd tossed the pictures of the collectible furniture and the "old"
automobiles into the team's in-basket.  Hopefully along with the safe
deposit box stuff, we'd be able to trace and confirm ownership.
   We still had a couple more storage areas to check out but decided to let
the temp team do it.  With two of them ones of us now, they had the
ability. I'm sure they'd tell us if they found some real goodies.
   Since we were at JRD, we wandered over the Skunk Works space.  Lookin'
good!  There were several people working intently on computers, a couple
ladies pouring over some of the textbooks from the Moon Base (new name
tonight?) and several printers and plotters in the middle spitting out
paper.
   Coming out of the plotter was what appeared to be a map of the Moon
Base. There were the three main power stations, the admin/living space, the
hangar and the two manufacturing areas (one on the surface and one below).
   The traffic layout looked really good with two large (50 meters in
diameter) tunnels running among the manufacturing areas, hangar and admin
space.  They were probably one-way traffic; we suspected quite a few things
would yield right-of-way to something 50 meters across.
   They'd gotten the temperature up to -30 degrees and the pressure was
around 8 psi.  A slow warm-up and thermal soaking at around 10 degrees a
day should get us up to a reasonable atmosphere in another nine or ten
days.
   There were a couple more maps of various facilities; more sketches than
true scale.  Yeh, the four antenna arrays we'd found were there.  Actually,
there were a couple more antennas scattered around, so there was a total of
eight.  Redundancy doesn't hurt at all.
   The observation posts were scattered between the front and the back
side. From a sketch labeled "typical," each post had sensors(?) on the
surface with the rest of the facility about 500 meters below.  Each had a
separate (much smaller) power station of some sort along with (SWAG) living
and working facilities.  There wasn't a connection or tunnel going to the
main complex marked, so they probably "commuted" back and forth.
   Why were they there?  Why the Moon and not Earth?  Obvious questions to
research.  Well, we'd do the funding for now and see what comes.
   We didn't bug anyone.  The people here had their projects to do and
didn't need us looking over their shoulder.  Kat said, "The Book really
emphasizes non-interference.  While there's open communication, every time
we interrupt someone, it takes at least twenty minutes for them to get back
into the work they were doing.  I'm curious as hell, too, but we'll
probably get a report tonight at the meeting."
   Patience is supposed to be a virtue.  Guess we'll wait along with
everyone else.
   The next floor up was more of the same.  There were several conference
rooms, a couple dozen standard office cubicles and the rest was open space
with desks, tables and general work space.  There was another big plotter,
several large-format printers and the ever-present copy machines.  Looked
as if they were going to town.
   Both floors had shields.  There was a notice at each entry door, "Full
security goes in on Tuesday.  Ensure you're in the log -- see Ramona at
Reception (5th Floor)." Made sense it was still pretty open while getting
deliveries on office stuff.
   Yeh, we hot-footed it down to Reception and chatted with Ramona.  She
pretended to glare at us suspiciously, then programmed us into the shield
nodes.  "You're all set.  I've been told to warn all you executive types if
you get too nosy, Mercy will sic Margaret McLennan on you."
   Em, we don't want that.  We promised to behave.
   Clann Meeting time!  Maybe we'd decide tonight if I'd be the butt of
more jokes while naming the Moon Base.
   Valerie handled the naming process.  At least they'd separated the fun
names from the more formal names.  After voting on the top five in each
category, we came down to "Bob's Hope" (groan) and "Selene City." I put my
vote on Selene City.
   The majority of the others did, too, so I was safe.  At least in public;
I got several _whispers_ about some even more outrageous nicknames.  Maybe
I could turn Val or Cynthia loose on them?  Have them get some coaching
from Maggie first so their teeth would be plenty sharp.  Yeh.
   Mercy gave us the Skunk Works report.  "We've got the Organizing Board
posted at Reception and on the 6th Floor.  Read and heed, please.  Somehow
I got talked into acting as the CEO for now, so you're stuck with me for a
while."
   Ben was the main facilitator if he was needed for war rooms.  He'd
"retired" from his documentation work and was full time at the Skunk Works.
   The lawyer coalition was still setting up the corporate structures for
the two (actually up to 10 now with all the dummy corps and holding
companies) corporations.  They'd be ready Real Soon Now.  In the interim,
they'd put Ben, Mercy, Roy and several others on a temporary salary so they
could eat.  Lookin' good for organizing.
   Ben had been elected (volunteered) to give us the technical reports. 
Made sense; he had long experience in translating tech-speak to pretty
plain English.
   "Okay!  First, it seems Sean Cullen and his crew did some exploring
yesterday.  You know about DNA and chemical tracing; they tracked down
several major traces on Earth.  They ran into a facility in Colorado."
   It appeared to be an observation post of some sort.  Even if it was
buried beneath 20-some feet of soil and other debris of a couple hundred
thousand years, it was in fine shape.
   It had a living space, working space (office), a couple out-buildings
and a ground vehicle.  Tucked away in back was a small accumulator.
   Earlier today, a couple adventuresome SW engineers had removed the
overburden, set up camouflage and tested out the accumulator.  Shit, even
after all that time, it still had about 25% charge left!  Dayum good
equipment!
   They'd dusted off the solar panels on the roof and a couple other places
and let them start charging.  The engineer guessed it would take about a
week to charge it up.  Ben told us, "Those panels appear extremely
efficient.  They've got a similar structure to the antenna we used to fire
up the first power station."
   There was a computer (SWAG) and some other assorted stuff.  The best
guess was they'd simply packed their personal stuff, shut down the
accumulator connection and walked out the door.  Why?  Not even a decent
WAG.
   They'd found about a hundred similar installations and several
decent-sized manufacturing or other industrial installations on the North
American continent alone.  Ben told us, "So far we've found 500 more
similar observation posts and 20 more industrial centers scattered across
the rest of the planet.
   "And that's not all!  Kate Hanlon asked the right question and the
Cullens found ten other major-sized industrial facilities scattered around
the rest of the solar system.  Venus, Asteroid Belt, a couple of Jupiter's
moons and one around Pluto's orbit.  We've assembled a 10-spirit team just
to search out and list what we're finding.
   "No real clue yet why they were here or why they're no longer here. 
There's no real attempt at colonization we can see even if Selene City can
hold millions of beings with ease."
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Tuesday 7/18)
   Tuesday morning a bunch of us popped up to Oakland, CA for the oversight
visit on Security Plus.  With 3,000 staff, they made security equipment
like cameras, monitors, alarm systems and the like.  Bob and I took Mario
and Sherry along as well as the Keavys -- as consultants.  Liam and Maeve
had originally developed the company and had sold it 20 years ago. 
Probably lots of changes since then.
   The book audit and probes hadn't turned up much; the usual few illegal
immigrants, a few fringe benefits (cameras, etc., at the employees' homes)
and a bit of sexual harassment (at least it felt that way on one side). 
We'd straighten it out.
   It had doubled in size (revenue) since the Keavys had sold it, so they
had plenty to look over.  Oh, yeh.  The Probe Patrol had spotted some 30
people with Potential and had them on an enhancement list.  Plenty to start
an Oakland-area Clann!
   The company had passed through a couple owners since the Keavys, but the
current CEO was more than happy to meet the founders.  We left them to
reminisce a bit (look at old pictures in the office -- Liam even popped
open an ancient secret panel and pulled out one of his stashed Irish
whiskey bottles).  They probably wouldn't be feeling much pain by
lunchtime.
   A couple hundred staff were in sales and marketing and spent a lot of
their time in the field.  Three hundred more were installation, maintenance
and repair; they did lots of running around the country -- and the world.
The majority, though, were right here in the factory.
   Lots of neat high-tech stuff, for sure.  The alarm systems could be so
sensitive they could detect a fly landing on a surface from the weight
change; that system had a good-sized computer system behind it to filter
out false alarms.  Betcha one would go off a lot with the constant
earthquake tremors in California.
   Probably 85% of the factory production was make-to-stock; they'd make
the cameras, monitors, system parts, etc., and put them in the stock room
as inventory.  The sales department could spec out a system pretty much on
the fly then the installers would pick up a bunch of parts, head to the
site and install them.  Piece of cake for the most part.
   Another 10% were special assemblies of existing parts, called assemble
to order.  These were almost as fast to fill and get out the door as the
stock items.
   The last 5% were engineered to order.  The R&D department (200 people)
would design, prototype and test a requested concept, then turn it over to
production.  This could take a long time, especially if it was really
esoteric, like an infrared light camera to operate at 75 degrees below
zero. Hmm, sounds like a place I know of!
   The percentages were by number of orders, not order price.  The
engineer-to-order line brought in 20% of the revenue, the assemble-to-order
got in 25%, and the inventory items pulled in the rest.  Of course, they
sold inventory direct to qualified buyers, too -- some of the items were on
the restricted-foreign-sales list so they had to be pretty careful.
   The CEO and COO (Chief Operations Officer -- ran the manufacturing) were
both full of Potential; they had tag nodes in and had some power being
pumped in.  We took them and several other department heads to lunch at the
local eatery.
   They were all good people.  The R&D department not only did the
engineer-to-order but also ran straight research.  The CEO told us, "We
keep trying to make the equipment more sensitive, robust and smaller.  If
someone doesn't know an alarm is there, they tend to trip it.  On the other
hand, if you've got a couple good-sized cameras waving around, the bad guys
will tend to go after an easier target.
   "Between having the obvious security and the no-seeum side, it covers
probably 95% of the situations.  Yes, probably someone could get through
everything we've got in some way or another; our clients are quite aware
they won't stop someone 100%, but they'll sure tend to keep the honest
people honest."
   They'd supplied the system at Vail, so we'd had some first-hand
experience.  Grin.  We recalled the cameras had been almost completely
unobtrusive; the only way we'd known some of them had been there was
because we could _see_ the monitor it was feeding and look for the line of
sight from the other end.  And that was only a mid-range system!
   After lunch, we split up.  Liam went off to R&D, Maeve, Sherry and Mario
went to the Finance Department, and Bob and I checked out several of the
manufacturing processes.  The SW company would probably be doing some very
similar processes, so getting somewhat familiar with them sure wouldn't
hurt.
   While they did have processes, over half had no documentation at all;
everything was in the shop floor foreman's head.  Hmm, not a good
situation. The documented processes were several years old and didn't match
what they were actually doing very well.
   We went back and talked with the COO about the situation.  Seems
everyone had simply "grown up" with manufacturing and had only a bit of
training from some books they'd read.  Well, it was better than nothing,
but it needed to be addressed ASAP.
   Seemed like a job for Mr.  Roy.  Bob told the two, "We're going to have
someone contact you about getting some training into the organization. 
While you're doing quite well now, you can probably improve your lead times
a lot, optimize your raw material and finished goods inventories -- your
accountants will love that -- and possibly get away from the daily order
expediting going on."
   We told them about the required attendance at one of CE's seminars and
gave them a couple seminar cards so they could register.  We could tell
they weren't the happiest campers in the world at having to do training
(both get and give), but the CEO said, "Well, maybe we wouldn't have to
work so hard later." They got the idea.
   We got the rest of the gang together and had another short meeting. 
Liam had really enjoyed looking at R&D; he had a few recommendations to
write up.  Neither Mario nor Sherry had found any major out-points in the
IT or Finance systems, so those were fairly under control.
   Good.  We packed up our stuff about 4:00 and popped back home.  Another
company doing well!
   Our F&Rs emphasized the need for training and process implementation. 
They'd probably need some consulting to get started while they were getting
their own training.  Well, if that was what was needed, we'd put enough
pressure on to ensure it got done.  The company had decent profit now, so
it wasn't a matter of cash flow.
   All right!  We sent our F&Rs then bopped around Selene City and several
of the Earth-based facilities for most of the night.
   ------
   BOB
   Wednesday, Kat, Mario, Sherry and I popped over to RRK to see how things
were going.  Amanda, Richard and Trevor were expecting us; Mario and Sherry
really enjoyed meeting them.
   They were now fully ones of us and were working hard at finishing the
last few steps of their teleportation checklist.  Very nice!
   We sat and grinned at each other for a couple minutes before we got down
to business.  They knew we trusted them, and they trusted us.
   Trevor told us, "Charles Tanner and Nancy Samuelson started us up a
Clann last Sunday!  Of course we hopped on the band wagon.  We're going
over the, em, special customs tonight."
   Sherry laughed and said, "I assume you elected a young stud as Ceann. 
After all, he and his mate might have to keep up with a lot of things."
   Amanda grinned and told us, "Charles may not be young, but from what
Nancy's told me, he can hold his own.  I suggested he could delegate some
of the duties to the Vice President."
   Mario asked, "And who's the VP?"
   Amanda and Richard pointed at Trevor, who rolled his eyes and groaned.
"Joan was all for it.  My ribs are still sore from when she elbowed me to
vote, 'Yes'."
   I told him solemnly, "I feel your pain." Kat and Sherry Irished me right
away.
   Kat eyed Trevor pointedly and remarked, "There's the cross-Clann
cultural exchanges, too, remember."
   Sherry chimed in, "Ceann Mor probably should do some honoring, too."
   Amanda looked a bit puzzled.  Kat told them, "We Irish know 'ceann' is
literally the part of the body above the shoulders, the 'head.' The word,
'Mor' is kinda like a booster; Ceann Mor is 'THE Head.' Just like you'd
say, 'THE Boss.' You know who that is, right?"
   Amanda eyeballed me really good and told us, "Yeh.  Word gets around
really quickly.  Joan's already got the hots for you."
   Argh.  Moan.  Complain.  Joan (and Amanda, too) were right fine bits of
stuff on their own part.
   Anyway, we got down a little deeper into RRK.  Richard told us, "We --
or I should say Charles and Nancy -- tagged about thirty of us here with
Potential.  What with the families often having Potential, too, we've got
around 75 now either ones of us or getting enhanced.  Not too bad a showing
for the Chicago Irish."
   Not bad at all.  Looked like Charles and Trevor would have their hands
full.  Hehehehe.
   Richard said, "We let a couple people go.  A couple _inspections_ showed
us they were dipping into the till.  They had a couple reasonably-clever
schemes but were so obvious about it we couldn't let it pass.  We're about
$50K shorter because of it.  The police were very interested."
   Yeh, they were the same ones the Probe Patrol had spotted.  While $50K
wasn't lunch money, we'd decided it wasn't a major issue, and RRK could
handle it on their own.  With an initial ten Potentials, we'd figured
they'd find it out fairly lively.
   Mario zipped his laptop over and showed them the map of the RRK, JRD and
Kat/Evin holdings.  "There's more of Kat's stuff being nailed down every
day.  We figure with any two holdings either next to each other or pretty
close, they'd be more valuable working together."
   He pointed out the Las Vegas, Dallas and Albuquerque clusters.  Kat
said, "A minor update.  Either Evin or I have property near Long Beach,
Houston and Jacksonville.  All three have some RRK property right close --
as near as we can tell -- and JRD Properties has a long-term lease on a
plant in Long Beach.  If we can work out a way of merging or cooperating
among ourselves, we could do some serious damage."
   Yeh, we could.  The RRK folk were aware of the Skunk Works, but hadn't
really been brought up to speed on what they'd been doing recently.  Mario
remedied that quickly.
   Obviously he had an inside track with Maggie, because he showed them a
remote _view_ of Selene City.  It was up to -10 degrees and around 8 psi --
almost beach weather compared to what it had been before.
   The RRK folk caught on to the potentials right away.  "If we can get the
technology understood, we could produce stuff the world's probably not seen
before -- at least this civilization.  With manufacturing either at Selene
City or on Earth, we could have several major distribution centers almost
right away.  A lot of the cost for a factory or warehouse facility is in
locating the property then building.  I know we've got a major factory site
near Long Beach; they're moving out next month to larger quarters.  Might
be an opportunity."
   Richard asked, "Bob, are you looking at changing the RRK investment
philosophy?  I'd say it's obvious you're behind the safe havens and
off-planet colonies plans.  All of that will take bundles of bucks."
   I told him, "Yes and no.  We'll discuss it more, but I'll probably want
it to focus in on supporting those efforts.  Not direct funding,
necessarily, but using your expertise and leverage to get and keep things
rolling.
   "While we're open to suggestions, we think selling something either few
have seen before or and at significantly-reduced cost because of our
manufacturing and raw material technologies is probably the fastest and
best way to fund what we need."
   We went over several ways of leveraging RRK's expertise with some of the
JRD companies' specialty areas.  We decided to put RRK's real-estate expert
together with our temp team and JRD's Global Manager to do some plotting
and planning.  With more of Kat and Evin's holdings getting nailed down
every day, there was plenty of plotting they could do.
   Sherry pointed out the other facilities beyond Earth and the Moon. 
Amanda said, "Hell, once we get them back on line, it'll just be a case of
getting them manned up.  We'll need to do some heavy recruiting.  Any
particular reason to restrict our personnel to the United States?"
   Not as far as we were concerned.  I told her, "Just from the people
we've found around Cabo San Lucas, we could probably recruit a couple
thousand in several days.  They'd need training from the ground up, but
with the study technology and Cullen Enterprises' policies, it might even
be better that way -- less false data to root out."
   Sherry said, "Might start with JRD's Van Nuys Temps.  While we haven't
done the full audit and probe run yet, they should know how to find and
hire people.  Betcha they know other agencies around the U.S., Mexico,
Canada and the rest of the world, too."
   Not a bad idea, even if it was Sherry who thought of it.  I kept my
mouth shut on that thought; her Irish was getting pretty good from being
around Maggie.
   We had an hour's discussion on recruiting.  Pending a good report on Van
Nuys Temps, we decided recruiting and training should start right away. 
Just from talking with Ben about some of his clients, there were plenty of
young, middle-aged and older folk who wouldn't mind getting out of the
normal crap-all-over-you corporate environment.
   If we found someone who had some drive, we'd seriously consider hiring
them and starting their training full-time.  We weren't after degrees, we
were after competency.  Just from the way the older Guerreros had
performed, we bet we could bring someone good up to a college-level or
above educational level within a year.  Cut out the psychology crap,
"rounded-student" courses and get them right into the channel.
   As we found more technology and got the various facilities up to a
livable environment, they could work and study at the same time.  Besides,
there were plenty of "over-qualified" people doing crap jobs.
   Toss in Fillmore Sales Relations with Van Nuys Temps and we could make
some serious dents in our projected manpower requirements.  Hell, Selene
City alone would probably take a million or so people easily.  Put several
thousand at each primary facility, and we could easily build up to a couple
million.
   Guess the trick would be finding people who not only had the ability to
do the work but also could handle the Sci-Fi aspect of working on the Moon
and in the solar system.  On the other hand, we figured it'd be a lot
better living and working environment than the Middle East where one could
get run over by the latest jihad at any time.
   Then there were the planetary-based manufacturing/mining facilities or
whatever they were.  Once the SW guys had checked them all out, we'd take a
look at the feasibility of opening up some of them.  If they were on land
we owned, that was a Real Good Thing.  Otherwise, we might just be able to
port them away to our land.  The fact they were probably self-supporting
made getting them in a chunk a lot more likely.
   The RRK folk (all the ones of us) gathered their families, and we ported
us all over to a high-class pizzeria for dinner.  Chicago pizza is good
stuff!
   Charles and Nancy joined us and got into the spirit of things right
away. Joan kept eyeballing us all evening; I could tell without even a
gestalt she had some serious plans for us all.
   We got a little rowdy, but no big deal.  With the language trick going
full-bore, we sang(?) lots of Irish dirty ditties.  People around us didn't
know what we were saying, so that was part of the fun.
   We didn't talk much RRK business but stuck to family and friends.  With
75 people and the expansion they were planning on, Clann Tanner, would
probably start up some other Clanns around the area.  After all, the
Chicago area wasn't exactly population-challenged.
   Sherry whispered to Kat, Mario and me, _"Betcha they'll broadcast some
fertility rites to fire up the natives.  If we got 30-odd thousand just in
the area Maggie leaked in, what would a concerted effort do around here? 
Besides, with Northwestern University right here, we could do a *lot* of
recruiting."_
   Yeh.  Amanda and the rest agreed right away; Northwestern would be a
great recruiting ground.  Get ones of us enhanced, get the mundane
recruiting going with the enhanced folk keeping an eye on things, and we'd
have something rolling fairly lively.
   We partied until 10:00.  Our oversight visit tomorrow wasn't until 10:00
so we had plenty of time in the morning -- unless Kat and Sherry came up
with some ideas.
   About 10:45, Sherry came striding in our room claiming this month's
first bi-monthly shagging was way overdue.  Moan.  Complain.  Well, a
Ceann's gotta do what a Ceann's gotta do!
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Thursday 7/20)
   I didn't hear much noise from Bob's room during the night.  Maybe it was
because all of the noise I was making while Mario showed me his version of
exploring a planetary body.  Hehehehe.
   We were off to Clean Pools in Beverly Hills today.  With 10 offices and
300 employees, they covered a lot of territory.  The audit had been pretty
clean, and the Probe Patrol had picked up only the usual illegal aliens,
hanky-panky with the clients and some mild service borrowing for some of
the staff's own pools.  We decided it was a fringe benefit and would make
sure it stayed fringe.
   Sherry came with us; Mario was off to the SW offices checking out
network stuff.  We popped into the Clean Pools office exactly on time -- no
traffic to worry about, for sure.
   Good.  The HR Director was one of us already; guess someone had been
busy.  She told us, "We've got at least another 9 or 10 just in the staff
alone.  From what I'm told, it'll probably end up higher after we work on
some of the families."
   The main office had all the accounting and the main scheduling server.
The other nine offices tapped into the main server for scheduling and
supply ordering.
   It only took about a dozen people in the main office and a couple at
each branch office to do the admin work; the rest of the staff were the
pool technicians and the motor pool mechanics.
   They had in-house training for new technicians (two days) and an
apprentice program for at least a week before they went on their own.  The
motor pool mechanics serviced the mini-vans the technicians used and did
minor repairs.  With some 50 vans, they had enough to do to keep from being
totally bored.
   After a look around the main office -- it was in decent shape -- Bob,
Sherry and I got a "tour guide" (one of us) to do some other-office visits.
We each picked three offices and headed out.
   Alice was my guide.  She'd been one of us for less than a week and had
just finished her "basic training" last night.  "The teleportation
checklist is next.  Now that sounds like fun."
   I told her, "It is.  We're not gonna fight the traffic at all today. 
Just _link_ in with me a bit and steer us to the first visit."
   She knew exactly where it was so we popped out in a quiet doorway about
10 yards away.  Yep, they were expecting us; they'd even cleaned the place
up.
   We met the local staff -- one was being enhanced right then -- and did
the tour of the three rooms and parking lot.  With a good-sized storage
shed for the equipment and supplies, it was actually a pretty good-sized
place.
   We talked with several of the technicians who came in and out.  They
mainly came by in the morning, checked out the schedule, stocked up on
supplies and headed out on their routes.
   Alice and I hitched a ride with one.  She (no gender-discrimination)
took us to four homes in Rancho Palos Verde (swanky neighborhood) and
showed us what she did.
   Check out the water chemistry and adjust as needed; they carried a list
of the pool capacity so didn't have to guess at it.  Brush the pool,
vacuum, then clean out the filter and straighten out the area.
   One place needed more diatomaceous earth in the filter, but that only
took an additional ten minutes.  Most of the visits took only a half hour
at the most.
   She told us, "Some of the owners hit on us a bit; more 'testing the
waters,' so to speak, than actually serious.  In the five years I've been
doing this, only one owner ended up in the pool when he got too
persistent."
   Yeh, she'd taken a couple up on their offers.  They hadn't lasted long,
the owners in a lot of these places changed every couple years.
   All right!  By the time we'd gotten the four done, it was after noon. 
Alice and I got lunch while the technician went to her last three pools. 
It often took them longer to travel between the sites than it did to do the
work.  That's Los Angeles for you.
   Alice and I hit the other two offices.  They were much the same, clean
and ready for inspection.  Unless Bob and Sherry came up with something, I
was ready to say, "Let it rip!"
   We got back to the main office about the same time as Bob and Sherry. 
They hadn't found anything to speak of, either.  After a short discussion
with the staff at the main office, we popped back home and wrote up our
F&Rs.
   Leone and Mark had a quick _talk_ with us.  Fillmore had come up with a
reasonably priced promotional campaign.  With JRD Media Repro, they were
going to press several thousand CDs to send out to the radio stations, put
a sampler of the songs on the Internet and promote to places like record
(now mostly CD-only) stores and flea market sellers.
   They were really happy!  I'd bet they'd be even happier after Fillmore
landed them a couple gigs at weddings, bar mitzvahs and the like.  Neither
wanted to do clubs yet; besides, they weren't even legal to drink.  Good on
'em!
   ------
   BOB
   Aileen and Donal Brady showed up on our doorstep.  Great!  We knew
exactly where to take them.  Donal had been to a nice restaurant in Navan
(near Dublin) several times.  From the sound of it, they'd really enjoy
Eire's Tavern!
   They did.  Sean, the harem and the rest of the N&B crowd were there. 
They greeted us with (literally) open arms and got us at their tables.
   I'd almost forgotten how fun the place was.  With all the chatter,
slinky dresses and peek-a-boo bosoms, Donal and I kept pretty alert.
   We paid for our dinner -- Kat, Aileen, Donal and I did some
song-and-dance routines right along with them.  Of course, the Irishman's
drunken hat staggered in and made the rounds!
   All righty, then!  Back home, we rested up from our strenuous day and
evening.  We played lazy around the pool with Mario and Sherry and talked
about how the Bradys were doing.
   Between full-time Probe Patrol during the day and working a lot as an
enhancement team and with the Skunk Works, they sure weren't sitting around
being bored.
   Donal had been a shop foreman for years in several industries so had a
lot of hands-on experience.  He told us, "By the time all these new
operations philosophies like Just in Time and the like came out, I was long
gone.  I talked with Roy several times, and both Aileen and I are gonna do
some studying and see how we can help out."
   Aileen said, "With all the 'alien' facilities we're finding, we might be
able to help out a bit.  We're sure not gonna go full time, but it might be
interesting to spend some time in Selene City or on one of Jupiter's moons.
We both have plenty of old memories of other places and times, but neither
of us really appreciated them.  Besides, we were pretty un-alert back
then."
   They told us Selene City was up to 0 degrees and 10 psi now.  Donal
said, "In another week, if the atmosphere engineers and the medicos give it
a clean bill of health, we'll be walking around in person."
   Sounded good to us.  I was ready for a personal inspection myself.  What
good's a fancy title if you can't abuse it a little bit?
   In the honoring room, Aileen was fit, energetic and very interested in
working me down to a pile of quivering flesh.  She almost did!  The younger
women might be more athletic, but she really made up for it with
experience.
   We spent some time touring Selene City.  Not too long, though.  Kat
dragged Donal back several times and Aileen thumped my poke spot soundly at
least six times.
   In the morning, we treated them to the buffet breakfast at the Rio in
Las Vegas.  Kat and I had survived.  Barely.
   Chapter 12
   KATHLEEN (Friday 7/21)
   Mid-morning on Friday, one of Papa Sonora's crew bopped in to upgrade
our Jacuzzi.  Out with the old pump!  In with the new pump!  She changed
the control box and demonstrated the controls.
   The jets were mainly on the seat and on the back around the rim.  We
could control the back and seat jets independently with combinations of
water pressure, pulsation rate and bubbles.  Totally neat!
   We wanted to check it out right away, but put it on our schedule for
later in the afternoon.  In the meantime, Sherry and I could anticipate. 
Hehehehe.
   With so much going on recently, we gathered in the den to ensure we had
everything straight and something hadn't dropped through a crack somewhere.
Of course, Mario had a list.
   The JRD oversight visits were all scheduled; there were still over a
dozen left to do.  Bob and I had done our F&Rs for all the ones we'd
visited; the Global Manager and Regional Managers had them and were doing
follow-ups.
   We had follow-up from the last RRK visit about recruiting off-planet
people.  That went into the tickler file for next week.  We made a list of
points to discuss about both the recruiting and the training, like where to
do the training, housing (if any) for the trainees and whether or not to
have it off in an isolated area so they wouldn't be disturbed.
   Everyone's Clann enhancement teams were running full out.  Henry had
made up several hundred confidential checksheets.  He'd told us the people
were really good about checking stuff out and in.  "With a serial number on
each one, we can actually do a pattern search and locate any specific one
in a couple seconds.  Makes it pretty easy.  If someone forgets to check
one back in, I can threaten them with the wrath of Valerie, Cynthia or
Maggie Sullivan.  I haven't had to call on them yet."
   Probably by now we had well over 1,500 ones of us with several more
around the country (world?) coming out every day.  Ceann Mor made a note to
discuss a complete member list with the Clanns Council.  Sherry cautioned
us, "Not too much admin!  Each Clann should be able to keep up pretty well
by itself.  If not, it's one sign the Clann's getting too large.  Besides,
the more lists we have to keep up, the higher the security risk."
   Mario said, "We haven't had an attack or incursion into any of our
systems that we're aware of.  Probably the safest one is the Exchange
server below JRD where we keep the email.  The confidential materials
network's there, too.  Since we keep it isolated from everything else
almost all the time, it's probably the safest stuff we've got."
   I pointed out, "If we can get a handle on the alien computers and can
make our own, we might end up with a system the rest of the world won't
even be able to locate, much less crack into.  They probably communicate
entirely different from our stuff.  Didn't George mention a wireless
connection?"
   Mario said, "Yes, he did.  I'm making a guess that it's going to be
completely different from our wireless.  I'd guess it has tremendous range,
encryption we haven't even thought of and is faster than our current fiber
networks.  Probably has boosters, relays and such scattered around in orbit
somewhere.  I haven't seen any wiring running from Selene City to the other
sites on the Moon; they probably have something similar or are in the same
network.  We computer nerds have lots of research to do."
   Yeh.  As if the rest of us had nothing to do, either.
   Mario had to take off to JRD.  He was spending half his time on the JRD
stuff training his current assistant and the other half with the Skunk
Works ensuring they had what they needed.  Even with that, I suspected
Sherry got enough time for cuddling and loving.  Grin.
   The three of us ran down pretty much everything else we could think of.
About the only thing we could think of that wasn't an active project was a
Los Angeles area Waystation.  There was community interest, but we'd have
to make a quick _talk_ with Clann Cullen since they were the main drivers
so far.
   We didn't try to keep up with the Skunk Works projects; they weren't
under our control, and we didn't want them to be.  Interference is one
thing they didn't need, either.
   In the late afternoon, Janine and Todd appeared on our doorstep.  Great!
Someone to help us test out the Jacuzzi!
   We all knew them, but really hadn't had a chance to be sociable.  We
kicked Todd and Bob out to do guy stuff and dragged Janine off to the
Jacuzzi.
   Janine was delightful.  Besides having a yummy body (nice puffy
nipples!), she was really personable.  Leaving the water jets off, we eased
into the water, relaxed and talked.
   She and Todd were going all-out in a relationship.  She told us, "We
really fit together well, especially after we were enhanced.  We've got a
really great QQV even knowing we're still minors and are in school.  Of
course, Mom knows Clann Reynolds really well and Todd's folks definitely
know about it.  In fact, they're getting enhanced now."
   She and Todd were really interested in the alien technologies.  Not just
the engineering stuff but the languages, culture, history and where all
that lead.  She said, "If there's one alien race, there might well be more.
Where are they, what are the cultures and what are their intentions?  There
might well be lots of information about others on the computers.  That's
what we want to get into."
   Sounded great to us.  Now for the test.  We got ourselves positioned
properly, set the jets for mid-range and pushed the button.
   Yowsah!  We levitated *all* the way out!  Those jets were strong!  We
got out of "harm's way" and turned them all the way up.  Jaysus!  The seat
jets were under 18 inches of water and still arced up three feet above the
surface.  I'd say they were strong enough for now.
   We turned them almost all the way down and checked them out.  Yum! 
Nipples popped up (Janine's were a good inch high), skin flushed and bodies
had a real good time!  Good thing we had the sound shield up.  Janine and
Sherry matched moan for moan while I shrieked a lot.
   Bob and Todd _peeked_ in.  After observing for a couple seconds, Todd
asked, _"Bob, does this mean we're off the hook for servicing their
seemingly-insatiable libidos?"_
   He got a three-way, "NO!" Nothing is gonna let them off the hook.
   Yeh, we were pretty well relaxed after a half hour.  Maybe it would last
us until the evening.
   Sherry took off to harass Mario and the four of us had dinner in
Montreal (Quebec) on the Avenue du Port.  French?  No problem.  Good stuff
with seafood and prime rib.  Some luscious French dessert something like
ice cream topped it all off.
   We found a couple nice places for shopping (nice for Janine and me at
least) and the guys suffered along.  Janine was up on the holograms so we
were able to get lots of nasty ideas from several swim-wear and lingerie
shops.  Hehehehe.
   ------
   BOB
   Todd was up to speed on pretty much everything.  He'd sure lost his
introversion over the last several months, because he and Janine were
really active in the Clann.
   In the honoring room, Janine was a ball of fire!  She had completely
yummy puffies which went way into my mouth.  She liked light biting on
them, so I did my best to oblige her wishes.
   Later, she asked, "Is it okay if I get together with Kathleen for a bit,
too?  I've never been with another girl, and I'm really curious."
   I told her, "Not an issue at all.  She's been eyeballing you all day
herself."
   We ended up the night with Todd, Kat and I giving her a Soo Laid for a
solid hour.  Guess she learned a little bit about girls -- she sure seemed
to enjoy Kat's red down!
   We ended up blasting ourselves into the Asteroid Belt.  Since we were
there, we nosed around and found several small alien facilities almost
completely masked by the background metal.  We took a close look at one.
   Todd said, _"Looks like a mining facility to me."_
   Yeh.  Just a small living facility attached.  Maybe they just attached
the entire thing to an asteroid or something and let it run on automatic?
The power station was a small thermionic converter (not in operation);
probably plenty for a small-scale operation.
   Janine inspected the living space.  _"Looks like two beings max.  Two
bunks and everything else small.  Maybe just enough to hold them long
enough to do some maintenance."_
   We nosed around the area a little more.  Bearing in mind several hundred
thousand years had gone by, we couldn't see any particular reason for the
small cluster of facilities to be there.  Maybe just a "rich" area back
then?
   Ow!  Janine had smacked my poke spot real good -- someone must have told
her about it.  She told me, _"More.  No automatic for us."_
   More she got.  What the hell, we didn't have to get up early.
   After a long breakfast in Ensenada, we packed them off to do some more
enhancements.
   We spent Saturday doing around-the-house stuff like laundry, soaking in
the Jacuzzi (Kat and Sherry *really* liked it) and some lazy swimming.
   We did put in several hours on studying Sean's detail manuals, though.
Things were fitting together really good by now; we could understand how
one department or area affected others and how the principles in The Book
filtered right down into process and procedure development.
   Early Sunday evening, Pat and Val popped onto our doorstep.  Will I live
through the night?  The shoe was on the other foot this time; Val kept
eyeing me and licking her lips.
   I wasn't able to drag out dinner too long; both Kat and Val saw to that.
Anyway, we got back home and talked for a while.
   PVC was in the middle of pretty much everything.  They were doing a lot
of tutoring for Alejandro and Linda, ensuring they learned about the
culture and upgrading their sexual education.  Of course, that required
lots of "hands on" training, right?
   Among the three of them, they'd already enhanced and trained over a
hundred people.  Val said, "Unless they've already got a Clann affiliation
which put in the tag, we train and release.  Of course, we note on the list
where they hang out most of the time, so any local Clann could pick them up
if they wish.  On the other hand, we sometimes get a batch from the same
area, like Duarte, so we encourage them to contact the Clann implementation
team to form their own.
   "Works out just fine.  We've added 30 new ones to Clann Reynolds;
probably why we've got so many onlookers at the meetings."
   That would be a reason.  On the other hand, maybe they just came to
admire all the beautiful female bodies?  I got a nice purr from Val and Kat
for that comment.
   Val wrung me out completely; I could barely move after three hours. 
Fortunately, she wore herself out too -- at least for a while.
   Pat and Kat were at a resting point, so we bopped off to the desert to
check out the facility in the sediment flats.  We came in high, and Pat
said, _"There's one hell of a heat bloom over the thermionic converter. 
We'd better bleed it off better or we might end up with some nosy visitors.
From a surveillance satellite, it would really stand out."_
   Fuck.  Most of us just popped right into the middle of things and didn't
look around from a distance.  Major oops!
   Well, they did have the converter up and operational; the heat bloom was
right over top of it.  Pat "mentioned" it to one of the engineers who
promptly went into overdrive.
   He gathered the rest of the engineers around, and in fifteen seconds
they had the waste heat being pumped someplace that could use it.  Like
Pluto.
   Yeh, the heat bloom started fading immediately.  I told the engineers,
_"Be prepared for visitors.  If you need to, pull the plug and port the
entire thing outta here.  The last thing we need right now is the Army or
whomever finding one of these.  Of course, I don't have to tell you to
watch out for the heat and pressure containment."_
   The engineer told us the reactor had heated up the entire interior space
and building to about 85 degrees.  We checked, and the reactor for Selene
City was the same; apparently, the electronics liked it that way so did it
automatically.
   Since this facility was on the planet, it didn't have to deal with the
extreme temperature ranges Selene City did.  The engineer's opinion was the
power plant just wasn't as heavily insulated as the Moon's.  No big deal.
   Since this facility was in the high desert, it frequently got cool at
night, so an unshielded 85-degree hot spot would stick out pretty good. 
With satellite image analysts looking for changes in conditions over time,
a new bloom some 40 meters across in the middle of the desert might attract
some interest.
   The engineers had shielded against the incoming heat from the sun but
not the outgoing during the night.  Oh, well.
   Well, I spread the word out rapidly.  In fact, I recommended (from my
high horse) that every facility we found be completely shielded from
thermal, sound and every other form of detection we could think of.  It
should look like "nothing here." Actually, it should look like the
surrounding material, not a nothing.
   I recommended we do it for every facility, whether or not we were
working on it.  We didn't need some amateur geologist to discover one of
them.  I thought it was a miracle someone hadn't found one of them before,
even if most of them were pretty well buried.
   Dayum!  Val knew about the poke spot, too.  Well, it was time for my
revenge.  The three of us ganged up on her for a two-hour Soo Laid which
had her begging for mercy!  Yeh, right.  No mercy!  She did survive,
though.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Monday 7/24)
   We had a quick _talk_ with Mercy about the security issues with the
various facilities.  She told us, _"Yes, that's an 'oops' all right.  Okay.
We've probably got at least a couple security-trained people who might be
interested in forming a team.  I know your Frank Duane and Thelma Harris
have military and police backgrounds.  I'll start with them for a
recommendation."_
   Bob and I figured she'd give it a decently high priority, so we put it
on our To Do List to check on later.
   The Clann Meeting was good.  There were lots of bodies in the Reynolds'
dining room and even more spirits _looking_ on.
   I got first crack at the floor; Rank Has Its Privileges.  I went over
Bob getting elected to head the Clanns Council and explained the "Ceann
Mor" concept.  I told them, "I'm sure it won't really go to his head.  If
it does, we've got at least 50 women more than willing to show him the
error of his ways -- plus a set of very-sharp Margaret Sullivan teeth."
   Maggie played the innocent, and we got a few chuckles.
   Bob spoke a bit about security, mainly the personnel security.  He
mentioned, "Witch hunts still happen."
   Evin told us of the handling if one of us (or more) were the target of a
pickup or attempted kidnapping.  Basically, if they were hostile (a foreign
government or big, bad corporation), do anything needed to prevent it.  For
a "friendly" government agency, prevent physical harm, keep our mouths shut
and scream for our parents and/or lawyer.  The last-ditch was to port our
butts outta there with lots of accompanying obfuscation.
   Pat Derman reported they had several skilled Krav Maga spirits on the
enhancement line.  Should be interesting to see what they come up with for
training.
   The engineers at the desert facility we'd visited yesterday had been
planning on firing up the fusion reactor in the next several days. 
Depending on what Mercy's team recommended, they might wait a bit longer.
   The Venus facility was hot!  Since it was parked right on the surface,
the outside temperature was around 750 to 800 degrees Fahrenheit.  While
the inside was only around 250 degrees (*good* insulation), it was up
around 200 psi.  Not a shirtsleeve environment, especially since there
appeared to be lots of carbon dioxide.
   The engineers were cooling it off with Kate-_touches_.  They had the
opposite problem from that in Selene City.
   Someone tossed George through the air to skid on the table; he hammed it
up a lot and told us, "Seems someone wants me to say something."
   He got Silvia Connor up with him and went over what they'd found on the
Colorado outpost's computer.  It had lots of goodies they could use right
away.  Tutorials, references, language instruction, the works!  There was
apparently tons of data storage available (a terabyte is a lot, so I'd
imagine a million terabytes is quite a bit more).  Big grin.
   They'd found what appeared to be observation logs.  From their limited
understanding, the place was mainly an observation outpost; they were
observing "the wildlife." He told us, "It immediately opens a whole area of
investigation.  They didn't seem to be raising or tending anything, just
observing.  Were they caretakers?  Zookeepers?  Seemed to be only one kind
of 'wildlife' they were really interested in.  All the log entries just
say, 'As expected.' Whatever that means."
   With some 500 observation outposts scattered around Earth as well as
lots of larger facilities (each facility had quite a few "personal"
computers similar to the outpost's), they were going to resurrect as many
as they could.  With lots of language lessons and other tutorials, he and
Silvia figured using those systems would be the most expedient way for us
to learn.
   He ended up noting, "And you adults thought you were done with school!
Ha!"
   He got some various threats on how sorry he'd be when some of the women
got done with him.  Right.  As sorry as Val had been last night.
   Anyway, from other reports, there were lots of spirits getting enhanced
(even as we were talking), more Clanns being formed and lots of studying
going on everywhere.  Lookin' good!
   After the meeting, Bob and I popped back home.  Mario and Sherry took
off for some Skunk Works stuff, so Bob and I had to find our own
entertainment.
   Our Babies Within were doing wonderfully!  At an ancient 37 days old,
they were solidly attached and growing as Oscar and Karen expected.  Just
to make sure, we gave them several good drenchings with Bob's special
baby-grow juice.  All in their best interest, of course!
   I wanted to do some exploring for our own Clann Reynolds' safe haven. 
Bob was fine with that, but cautioned me, "We've got most of this stuff
delegated so we don't have to do it ourselves.  We've gotta be careful we
don't micro-manage.  I was doing a bit of that myself at the desert plant
the other day, but it was somewhat of an emergency situation."
   Yeh.  I'd cautioned him about non-interference earlier, so turn-about
was fair play.  Anyway, it wouldn't stop us from looking around.
   So, we bopped around the high-desert area towards Las Vegas.  We wanted
something east of the major fault lines so we'd have some protection in
case California decided to slide into the sea.
   The Mojave National Preserve looked interesting.  Just west of the
Nevada state line, there were tons of mountains, very few roads and was dry
as a bone.  Shouldn't have any danger of flooding.
   The good part was there were lots of decent-sized mountains and rocks.
We could go completely underground and the mountain above would shield us
from sight and absorb sound and heat from overhead surveillance.  We'd have
to build from scratch and probably have to import water.  Then again, we
could "drill" for water as deep as we wished or simply port it in as
needed.
   If we could duplicate a thermionic converter, it would handle our power
requirements.  Roads and access?  We don't need no stinkin' roads!  It was
an idea to pass along.
   [DHS = Department of Homeland Security] Around 3:00, Frank got hold of
us.  _"Bob, I've run into a couple DHS and military probe results.  There
was a really pronounced heat bloom Sunday morning over the facility in the
desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.  There's been some activity on
the military and DHS channels; they're going to check it out tomorrow._
   _"Mercy got together a little group of security and military trained
people to start up some security.  One of the probes told us the Air Force
is going to do a camera run over the area tomorrow morning, and there's a
DHS team running a chopper into the area if it looks interesting.  We may
have to bail out of there in a hurry."_
   Bob told him, _"Yeh.  I don't know if our holograms and shields would
stand up under intense visual scrutiny or ground radar.  Can you make some
withdrawal plans?  We'd probably want to port the entire facility out of
there so there's nothing left for them to find -- if they get that far."_
   Frank told us, _"We've made up a preliminary plan.  The engineers are
shutting down the thermionic converter as we speak.  None of us has tried
to port a live Sun chunk; one tiny mistake, and we could end up with a
really good-sized hole in the ground and lots of attention."_
   Bob told him, _"Good.  I don't know what would happen if you just ported
the Sun chunk back into the Sun and let the rest of the containment just
collapse.  Anyway, do what you need to do.  Trying to think like a military
or DHS mind is a bit out of my area of expertise._
   _"Kat and I just made a pass over the Mojave National Preserve; one
could probably dump fifty facilities like it back in the mountains with a
hologram cover and no one would notice it for a long time.  You might even
dig out underneath a mountain and store everything there.  There'd be
nothing to attract attention."_
   Shit.  We needed the DHS and military on our backs like we needed
another jihad in the world.
   We _peeked_ at the engineers working on the thermionic reactor.  They
were going down a graphical checksheet similar to the one we used to start
up the converter in Selene City.  We figured with Frank and his crew
around, they'd yell for help if they needed it.
   ------
   BOB (Tuesday 7/25)
   Frank had volunteered Henry to work with the security team.  Not much of
a surprise; our Warrior-Heart had quite a knack for that sort of stuff.
   Just after dawn, he told us, _"We had a medium-altitude flyover.  The
pilot had instructions to make several passes exactly over the bloom area.
A couple probes told us they plan on another run early this afternoon to
catch any different shadows."_
   The Air Force would look at the photos in the afternoon and pass on
results.  There was a squad of Marines and geology specialists scheduled to
check out the area on the ground early Wednesday morning before the sun got
too hot.  Guess we were gonna have some visitors.
   ------
   Anyway, we had a visit to JRD Media Repro in North Hollywood.  The 75
staff duplicated CDs, DVDs, audio cassettes and video cassettes.  The
cassettes were getting fewer as time went on; not much call for them
anymore.
   Quite a nice place, in decent shape.  The President was almost one of
us, and there was another as the floor manager.  There were two clean rooms
where they made the CD/DVD masters and four clean rooms where they made the
production disks.
   The cassettes and videos were made in another area; there were a lot of
machines running tape in parallel with almost everything being run by
computer.  The operators just ensured the cassettes loaded and unloaded
properly.  Nothing to it, to hear them talk.
   The clean rooms pumping out the masters didn't seem busy, but pretty
much everything was hidden inside the equipment.  A production line could
pump out 500 to 900 disks an hour, which wasn't bad at all.
   We had a good-sized storage room to store the masters and the stamps
(they had names like Father, Mother, sons and the like.  Maybe the Holy
Ghost was in there, too.).  It was completely climate-controlled and was
pretty dayum secure.
   It took an hour or so to create and validate a master.  Once that was
done and the stamp made, the process started in the production line.  Al
(the President) told us, "We like the longer runs of a couple thousand. 
Once the setup's done, the line just runs.  It takes several minutes to
switch to another stamp, so it's down time."
   Well, we knew Fillmore used this place; maybe a Leone and Mark hit CD
was getting run right then!
   We took Al and several others to lunch and talked more shop.  Most of
the operation was planning and priorities; everyone wanting a production
run wanted it done right now!
   They purchased the plastic cases from an outside vendor and had the
printing for the liners done outside.  Al's Operations Officer told us, "We
only have a mismatch between the case and the disk maybe once every six
months.  If they don't need a liner, it speeds up the process
considerably."
   Sounded good to us.  The Probe Patrol hadn't found any hanky-panky, it
was running smoothly and the books were in good shape.  It was a smooth,
"bring 'em in and move 'em out" operation without any Hollywood politics or
power plays.  Leave that to others.
   We passed out Sean cards.  Al and the rest didn't mind taking a weekend
in Seattle -- at company expense of course.  I grinned at them and said,
"Enjoy.  Take the family, mistress, boy friend or whomever along and make a
weekend of it.  Not too much partying, though; you're still responsible for
broken furniture!"
   ------
   The Air Force did its afternoon flyover right on schedule.  Henry (who'd
been volunteered to be our liaison with the security team) told us, _"The
engineers and the team did real well, I think.  We put about 60 feet of the
sediment back on top and the shield is holding it up.  Of course it'll look
different on the surface.  If they come look, they'll have fun -- and we'll
have fun watching."_
   ------
   Brenda Quinn told me, _"The lawyer coalition set up a non-profit
organization for the Clanns Council.  Several thousand dollars of funding
magically appeared from somewhere._
   _"Anyway, you guys get together and do the formal elections so we can
wrap up the paperwork.  We centered it in Chicago, since it's pretty much
in the middle of everything."_
   Speaking of Mario, JRD had "fired" him to go full-time with the Skunk
Works -- the final corporation shenanigans weren't quite complete yet.  His
assistant got promoted to JRD Corporate IT Manager, Carmel McLennan was
Global IT Manager, and everyone was happy.
   Carmel had the authority and funding to send out inspectors to check out
each JRD company's IT area as needed.  She got saddled with checking out
backups, disaster recovery, record retention (legal and otherwise) and a
host of other stuff.
   Apparently she didn't mind.  She was training half a dozen people to hit
the road and kick butt -- don't bother to take names.
   Kat and Evin's temp team was about halfway through the pile of stuff. 
Yeh, they'd checked out the other storage areas.  Tons of art, more
furniture and other valuable goodies.  Kat and Evin had told them,
"Inventory it, get it appraised and we'll see what we've got.  Most of it
seems to be resting easy, so just ensure there's clear title.  No hurry."
   We had them give the real estate and financial accounts a bit more
priority.  Especially with the real estate, we had some plans for some
not-too-distant future growth.
   Some of the RRK people were working with them on matching up nearby
property.  They got along really well; a couple of them were already
pairing up.  What's a couple thousand miles to a courting couple? 
Especially ones who could port anywhere in the world (and beyond if
desired) for a quick lunch date.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Toro told us the Air Force had done its spook analysis and had decided
the place did merit a closer look.  He told us, _"The DHS is getting
together with some geologists, a squad of Marines is coming in from
Twentynine Palms as a training exercise, plus a bunch of Army types from
Ft. Irwin.  They'll be on site tomorrow.  We're gonna get everything outta
there tonight."_
   ------
   (Wednesday 7/26)
   Well, lots of the gang were hanging around in the morning waiting for
the circus to start.  Some of the young-uns were darting around pretending
to sell goodies.  _"Get your programs here!  Get your programs Here!  Can't
tell the Christians from the lions without your programs!  Get your
programs here!"_
   The DHS chopper made its appearance right on schedule.  It circled
around the area several times taking pictures then settled down off to one
side.  Of course we had probes and _inspections_ running all the time.
   The disturbed area was in a triangle with the bloom area over where the
thermionic converter had been.  The triangular area between it and the
actual facility had been completely uncovered before but now was topped
off.
   Henry told us, _"Everything artificial is outta there.  We dug out a
chunk of mountain and ported everything in.  A bit messy in spots; several
miles of assorted piping is a bit difficult to make nice and neat."_
   There was a void in the triangle about 20 meters below the surface and
it was pretty empty for the next 75 meters down until it hit bedrock where
the equipment had rested.  There were sediment/mud "pillars" here and there
which were helping hold the surface up.
   Henry told us, _"There's a couple hundred pounds of cold volcanic gas
mixed with swamp gas -- methane -- helping hold it up.  From our sources,
pretty much any geologist would say it was a volcanic vent leak from years
ago and some of the methane must have escaped and flared.  Right now, it's
in equilibrium.  Puncture it, though, and it'll deflate.  Hehehehe."_ Some
people have a nasty sense of humor.
   The place was at least 20 miles from the nearest real road.  There were
some dune-buggy tracks here and there, but it would be a tough drive in.
   The Marines didn't drive; they came in a dozen choppers (with equipment)
and surrounded the area as if it were going to heave up and try to conquer
the U.S.  Henry told us, _"Frank's saying it's gonna be one hell of a
cluster fuck before long."_
   The geologists unloaded a bunch of equipment from the DHS chopper and
the Marines unloaded a shit-pot full from theirs.  There were a couple
Hummers, some trailers and lots of camping gear.  Looked like they were
gonna stay a while.
   The geologists loaded a lot of gear in the back of one of the Hummers
and took off around the triangle.  They stopped every hundred meters or so
to set up a sensor station and to take gas readings.  Yep, they were
getting some indications of the methane; in fact, they could smell it a
little.
   We all kicked back and enjoyed the show.  The Marines and Army folk were
a lot smarter than the geologists.  They set up sun shelters, a couple
mobile kitchens, toilets and lots of water dispensers.
   The DHS guys wandered around looking for some terrorist to emerge from
the ground.  Until proven otherwise, they were convinced this was a test
site for some devious plot.
   The geologists had the sensors set up in about an hour; at 2 klicks to
the farthest point, they used a lot of sensors.  Henry told us, _"They're
gonna fire up the ground radar, echo sounders and that sorta stuff to see
what's underneath."_
   Yeh.  They gathered under a sun shade (getting smarter), did a lot of
magic with some equipment and peered into some computer screens.  Yep. 
There was a hollow underneath.
   There was a bit of an argument among them.  Some wanted to get a core
sample over the bloom area while others wanted to wait to see if the
methane traces died down.  Guess the "core" guys won, because they went
right out to the middle of the bloom and set up a small drilling rig.
   At least they had the sense to run hydraulic lines from a diesel-driven
pump situated a good 50 meters off the bloom.  They lowered the drill and
let it rip.
   Henry said, _"This is where it should get interesting.  There's only
about 5 meters of *very* loose sediment right where they're drilling. 
Should get exciting in a little bit."_
   They broke through in about fifteen minutes and pulled the drill back
up. When it was a couple feet from the surface, the pressure below just
blew the entire rig up in the air several feet.
   We had a nice geyser of nasty-smelling gas blowing dry, loose sediment a
good 20 meters in the air.  The geologists showed arseholes and elbows
while they hauled their butts outta there!
   Everyone became very alert.  The majority of the military were well on
the other side of the disturbed ground (smart) while most of the DHS guys
had gathered right next to the bloom area.
   Of course they and the geologists were immediately covered with dust and
dirt.  They hopped in a Hummer and boogied!
   The Marines and Army guys looked quite amused for a while.  That is,
until the ground over the triangle started sinking slowly.  The pressure
being relieved had lessoned the support underneath so it was collapsing.
   The security team and engineers wouldn't play any tricks, would they? 
Grin.
   Every chopper immediately fired up its engines -- just in case.  The
drivers pulled the Hummers back another 50 meters while the rest of the
military guys under the sunshades just laughed -- politely.  Right.
   Over the next hour, the ground collapsed and sunk a good 75 meters --
right down to the bedrock.  They now had a triangular sink hole in the
middle of the desert.  Big fuckin' deal, right?
   Well, we now had a spare thermionic reactor, fusion reactor and a mining
facility (or whatever) while the DHS had a dead end and the geologists were
planning on how to write their next paper for publication.
   Maggie said, "They're already arguing whose name gets to be on top.  A
couple think they'll get their PhD out of this and the rest think it'll
guarantee tenure.  Fuck.  Glad I'm out of *that* racket."
   The fun was over.  We left a few tags in some of the military folk and
put their names on the enhancement list.  The geologists and DHS folk had
several conferences with the Marine and Army officers, yakked on their cell
phones a while, then took off in the DHS chopper.
   The DHS had decided it was too hot to search the sinkhole for terrorists
(it was only around 95 degrees -- wusses!) and the geologists were going
back to get some funding and more equipment.
   The Marines and Army packed up pretty as you please and were outta there
within the next hour.  *They* weren't planning on coming back, although a
couple of the Army guys were wondering when they'd be assigned to dig up
sand from somewhere else to fill the sinkhole.  Not a joke, either.
   ------
   BOB
   We ducked that one because of decent intelligence and quick, intelligent
work.  Frank would probably have the Probe Patrol watch things at the DHS,
etc., for a while to see if anything else about it came up.  I wasn't gonna
jog his elbow.
   What the heck.  We stopped by the Colorado outpost (now completely
shielded for radar, heat emissions, radio, etc.) to see how the gang was
doing there.
   George and Silvia must have taken advantage of the excitement elsewhere
to jack things up.  The whiteboard showed, "Level 3 Training Mode."
   They'd made copious notes on running the various training modes, getting
into the tutorials and what they'd learned on getting access to the various
programs.  Not a tutorial in itself, just enough to guide one of us newbies
to the right place to begin learning on our own.
   Silvia told us, "Since it's you guys, I'll tell you a bit of what we've
learned.  The technical language is called 'Sperk.' Nice and hard-sounding,
like the structure.  The emotional, conversational language is "Phane."
It's a lot softer.
   "They called themselves the Cels.  Not quite sure where the names came
from, but so far that's what we came up with.  As soon as George gets off
his lazy kid ass and brings some of the other systems up, we'll probably
release them to you guys for training.  Of course, the Skunk Works guys
will probably try to pull rank, but that's between you and Mercy."
   Okay.  RHIP but not yet.  Let them run with it for a while.
   We had a talk with Sean about the Waystation.  They and the N&Bs were
right in the middle of some real estate transactions so hadn't pursued it
much beyond the surveys.  Sean told us, _"We're anticipating finding a new
person with experience in the area to head up the project.  We're in the
throes of expanding ourselves and don't really want to take on something
this size.  We're more than willing to contribute some time, but we can't
run the show."_
   Maggie brought up the fact we didn't appear to have a group-wide search
for specific talents.  True.  We guessed among all the network and computer
experts we had, they could figure out a way of submitting a query to
everyone without having to keep and synchronize a list of members for each
Clann in one place.
   Now that Mario was full-time with the Skunk Works, maybe he could come
up with something decent.  We had the secure server and network below JRD
where we were keeping a lot of the Southern California data; could that be
expanded or integrated with other places?  Perhaps similar regional data
centers across the world (eventually)?
   Dunno what he would think, but it sounded interesting to me.  Simple
enough, send him an email!
   ------
   Pat and Cynthia showed up on our doorstep.  Argh.  Betcha Val had done a
lot of training with Cynthia; I might not survive this round.
   Poor Pat was fated to endure another night with Kathleen.  Maybe she'd
take pity on him, but I really doubted she would.  Even at just over a
month along, we could tell the hormones were really running in her body.
   We'd decided lots of drenching from lots of different sources would
really toughen up the Babies Within and make them grow faster.  Yep. 
That's right.  That's what we decided.  After all, don't the Ceann and
Ceann-Mate have a tap to the mystical river of all knowledge?  Grin.
   The social secretaries had made reservations for us at the SkyCity
restaurant atop the Space Needle in Seattle (Washington).  There's usually
a long wait to ride the elevators up, but we managed to bypass it.
   We checked in; we had a half-hour wait so we went up to the observation
deck.  Really, really nice.  We saw the mountains, the bay and lots of
islands and watched the boats putter around.  That's relaxing.
   Dinner was decent.  With the restaurant revolving around, we saw the
mountains again along with a view of Seattle.  We put up our garble shield
and yakked away.
   PVC was going at it hard.  While they tutored Alejandro and Linda quite
a bit, it wasn't so time-consuming now.  Alejandro and Linda had a good
grounding in English, the North American (Burbank) culture and could now do
a tremendous amount of studying on their own.  It didn't preclude them from
having lots of fun.
   Everyone took their turn on the Probe Patrol.  With the number of new
people getting slotted in for a shift, they were taking their turn maybe
once a week now.  That left plenty of time for other projects such as
enhancing new folk.
   Cynthia told us, "We've sicced Alejandro and Linda on a few English as a
Second Language folk and they've done right well.  The Clann Fuerte has
their own trainers down in Cabo, so no one's hurting.
   "With Ramon and Elisa coming up a couple times a week, they're still
accountable to them; I'd say we're stricter than their parents."
   Megan, Dan and Art were still running around with each other and having
fun.  The six of them were actively seeking out new people for both the
middle school Brain Trust and for the next year's Freshmen class at Mickey
C.  They'd scoped out most of the elementary school class for next year,
including the new seventh-graders.  They'd found half a dozen so far and
with some younger siblings, were forming the basis for a Brain Trust in the
elementary school, too.  Good on em!
   In the honoring room, Cynthia wanted it slow and sweet -- she got
exactly that with a few twists thrown in.  She'd definitely been keeping up
her growth rate; the Sorcerer's Grip fit perfectly on her wonderful set of
perfectly placed breasts.
   She knew (and applied) stuff which dayum near wore me out.  Not just
technique, she was warm and loving to go along with it.
   We surfed several small waves (along with Pat and Kat) then everyone
ganged up on Cynthia for a two-hour Soo Laid.  Our final tsunami blew us
out around Jupiter, so we took the opportunity to check out a couple of the
facilities there.  Yep.  They were cold, all right.  Kat and I figured we'd
wait until they got them warmed up a bit before we asked for a personal
oversight visit!
   Speaking of temperature, we found Selene City up to 60 degrees and
around 15 psi.  One of the atmosphere engineers told us, _"We've been
sanitizing the place with ozone baths the last couple days.  That should
get any nasty critters.  We haven't found anything at all, but the cold
could have preserved most anything."_
   They'd found ionic particle precipitators in the air shafts and had
fired them up.  They'd had to clean some fan blades and air filters, but
the place was pretty particulate-free.
   The oxygen level and the rest of the gases were acceptable even to the
most cynical of them.  The engineer said, _"We'll do a final check
tomorrow. It should be up to 70 by then.  If it's a go, we might permit
in-person visits to get used to the gravity."_
   They hadn't turned on much of anything except the ventilation and
lights. They were waiting on a better understanding of the technical
language (Sperk) before they started messing around with much of anything.
   George's team had identified some 200,000 computers the same size, etc.,
as the one at the Colorado outpost.  They figured they were the equivalent
of the standard "personal" computer like we might use at home -- except for
being quite a few orders of magnitude more powerful.
   Yeh, there were several other *big* computer systems.  They weren't
touching them for a while yet.  It's gonna be fun; from George's
description, just a couple of the "personal" computers together probably
had more computing power than the United States.  So, what would having the
big systems on line give us?
   ------
   The geologists were back at the sinkhole in the desert.  They'd run
ladders down, but had the guts to put their main encampment right on the
bottom.  We spotted a few tag nodes in them and figured they had a couple
guardian angels keeping an eye on them.  The sinkholes appeared stable
(Henry said they weren't planning any more fun), but it was still nature in
the wild out there.
   About that time, Cynthia pounded me in the ribs and demanded we go back
home.  She said, _"It's time for some monkey sex!  I'll bet a dinner you
give up before I do!"_
   We called it a draw after another couple hours.  She was still a growing
girl, and though she had decent endurance, I'd had a lot more practice and
was a bit older.
   ------
   (Thursday 7/27)
   In the morning, we zipped over to Oakland for breakfast along the Bay.
We found a decent little hole in the wall right at the end of 7th Street
where we could watch the traffic on the Bay Bridge.  Busy place, the Bay
Area!
   We shipped Pat and Cynthia off after breakfast; they had a mid-morning
training session scheduled.  Yeh, we'd all survived.
   We'd slacked off a day so we could enjoy the fun in the desert.  Time to
get back to work!  We didn't have an oversight visit scheduled until next
Thursday, so we had almost a week off.
   We buckled down and studied the Sean detail manuals for several hours.
We were well over half-way through, as was Sherry.  Mario was running a bit
behind, but since we had him busting his butt over at the Skunk Works, we
forgave him.
   Dan Jonston showed up on our doorstep at 4:00.  Kat hugged him and said,
"So glad you're here!" She pointed behind me and told me, "She's your date
for the night." It was Sherry in full knock-em-dead dress.  She whispered,
_"I've gotta get my second shagging somehow, right?"_
   Right.  Moan.  Complain.
   Kat got changed for dinner, and we took off to Miami for Cuban.  We got
right in and got settled.
   Dan was working his butt off (according to him, at least).  What with
doing enhancements, helping out with Alejandro and Linda and helping keep
Megan's libido somewhat satisfied, he didn't have a lot of time for his
history hobby.  He told us, "Doesn't matter a lot.  I'm not so much into
historical people as historical sites.  Now, I can go to a historical site
and _dig_ in to see what there is to see.  Rome, for example, still has a
bunch of buried places they haven't even discovered yet.
   "Of course, I'm not above putting an idea or two in some archaeologists'
heads, so they're making some interesting discoveries.  I follow along and
pick their brains as they're finding and looking at things so I get all the
benefit with almost none of the work.
   "Recently, I've been going around to some of the outposts and facilities
on Earth and _looking_ around outside and underneath the original ground
level.  So far, I've found quite a bit of junk -- probably actual junk --
that they didn't recycle.  Then again, we don't really know if or how they
recycle.  Yet."
   He was on the Skunk Works search and mark team for Celian installations
and artifacts.  The team had found another hundred small mining(?) stations
in the Asteroid Belt like Janine, Todd, Kat and I had.  Our tip to them
gave them plenty to look at.
   He said, "It's a lot more discriminating to trace things down when
they're nestled up against a metallic asteroid.  The asteroid has the
annoying tendency to mask the artificial alloys.  Add to that the various
metals they used for the stations vary a lot, almost as if they made them
on site without a really strict quality control."
   Anyway, he was doing great, was having a lot of fun, and was really
eager to help contribute to the Clanns' survival.
   We made the rounds to various places while Dan pointed out some
interesting things he'd found.  At least he and I thought the drain and
waste disposal layout were interesting!  If Kat and Sherry were a little
bored, they didn't show it; they just _chatted_ away.
   In the honoring room (she deserved it), Sherry was more interested in
snuggles and snogs rather than a lot of shagging.  That was fine, she'd
have plenty more chances to get a *really* good shagging!
   We chuckled every once in a while during the night when we heard Dan
moan, groan and complain.  Kat must have ignored most of it, because she
got to shrieking and screaming and didn't let up for a good hour.  Yeh, the
Babies Within got several good drenchings.
   Breakfast was in Cancun.  While Dan had nosed around the city as a
spirit, he'd never been there physically.  After he stuffed himself really
good, he finally perked up a bit.  He told us, "I'm definitely coming back
here for dinner sometime!"
   He had a full day scheduled, so we let him take off while we three lazed
around for another half hour.
   Back home, we hit the books again.  Poor Mario was getting left behind.
Then again, we weren't down in the trenches like he was.  Still, he was
managing to get in at least an hour a day.
   We nosed around JRD and did a quick port to Akron to check out what was
happening (and to steal some of Nana's cookies).  Clann Flannigan was doing
great.  They had about 40 people by now and had sprouted three additional
Clanns in the Akron area.  Great growth!
   Seanathair and Nana were doing great themselves.  They looked a good
thirty years younger and told us they felt 30 again.  Nana eyed me and
said, "There's other parts which feel young again, too."
   Kat and Sherry laughed and told her, "Guess we'll have to work you in!"
   They were spending a lot of their time doing enhancement training. 
Seanathair told us, "We're taking it easy.  Between the training and trying
to keep up with Nora's, em, urges, I have all I can handle."
   Nana smacked him a few times and said, "Don't stop misbehaving!"
   Sherry took off in the mid-afternoon to track down Mario and either help
or hinder him.  His choice!  Kat and I got back home about 3:30.
   Art Wilson was our honoree that evening.  He was lookin' good and acted
as if he were another ten years older.
   Well, we treated him like it.  Kat told me, "You'll have to do without a
date tonight.  Watch a movie, play some solitaire or whatever.  Art and I
are gonna go out and paint the planet red!"
   They left me all alone to contemplate whatever.  Good enough; I lazed in
the Jacuzzi, took a little swim, raided the refrigerator (plenty of stuff
there) and played around with the house shield to change the outside house
color to fade to completely different paint and trim over several days. 
Let the neighbors figure it out!
   I slept alone for the first time in months.  It was actually kind of
fun, even if the screams and shrieks from the honoring room woke up my body
a couple times.  Not all of them were Kat's, either!
   Chapter 13
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 7/29)
   Not a lot happening right then and there, though there was a ton of
stuff coming down the line Real Soon Now.  We expected the Skunk Works to
open up Selene City within the next week unless they found something really
unusual.
   Most everything else was in progress.  There was plenty of enhancing and
training going on; we couldn't make even a WAG at how many ones of us were
out and about now.
   Bob and I hit the books for a couple hours; we only had one more detail
manual to go!  Mario was a bit behind but was still making good progress.
   About 11:30, Mario and Sherry popped back in from whatever adventure
they'd been on.  Good excuse for a party!
   We (Bob) fired up the grill for some surf and turf and I heated up the
Jacuzzi.  Sherry and I gotta ensure the water-jet pump hadn't crapped out
on us!
   We ate, soaked in the 'cuzzi and talked a lot.  Most of it was about
options the Clanns had in dealing with the new technologies and the Earth
people.  Dayum, there were some interesting issues!  We hashed over a lot
of them in the next several hours and decided the issues should go to the
Clanns Council for discussion.  The option they chose would decide our
course of action for years to come.
   ------
   Sunday was a bit more of the same, except Bob and I mainly flitted
around and _talked_ with various people about different projects.
   Ana and the Drs.  Gold (plus Mary and Sam) were working directly with
several other Skunk Works people on the medical aspects of Selene City. 
Their major concern was microbes, spores and other biological hazards which
may have been preserved in the cold.
   Ana told us, _"Even after a couple hundred thousand years, there could
still be active agents.  They could be Celian or imported from Earth by
commuters.  Just like some of our current diseases like measles, we might
or might not have immunity to them.  We've been disinfecting with heavy
ozone doses which should help immensely, but we're still gonna keep a
really close eye on things for a long time."_
   They were testing atmosphere samples every day in all the areas.  Quite
a few of the research lab animals were spending time up there; apparently
they got used to the lower gravity in a couple hours.  So far, they were
all hale and hearty.
   Well, we'll let them worry about it.  As far as we could tell, they were
taking whatever precautions were needed.
   George and his computer cronies had worked up a checklist on bringing up
the Celian personal computers.  Once we had the all-clear to go into Selene
City, they wanted to bring up as many of the 200,000 systems as possible so
the rest of us could start training.
   They'd recruited several hundred other computer folk from the newer ones
of us who were more than willing to go do the actual work.  For some
reason, they were quite excited about an entirely new computer system in a
remote exotic location.  Grin.  I could barely wait myself.
   Madeleine and Dermot MacKenna appeared on our doorstep in the early
afternoon.  Gonna be an interesting night, especially since I might learn
about the fabulously-rumored "Dermot Special." Hehehehe.
   We immediately headed for the Jacuzzi; it was getting to be a favorite
getting-acquainted place.
   Yum!  Madeline looked completely delicious.  Dermot had a cleas of an
Irish leprechaun with a pointy curled beard and long hair -- red, of
course. Pop on a green shirt and a flat hat and he'd be perfect.  [cleas:
Irish.  Trick.  Here, used as holograms and other trick-the-senses
techniques.  Used as both singular and plural.]
   He wasn't at all hesitant to check me out, either.  He grinned at me,
licked his lips and said, "Hopefully you'll survive." Devil!  Yeh, he knew
what I was thinking and grew a couple short horns.
   Madeline was going full bore as JRD Global Sales Manager.  She'd
recruited three Regional Sales Mangers to work with her and the Regional
(Operations) Managers.
   With the Probe Patrol and audit team running through a company per week,
they had plenty to do.  She told us, "Once a company's been vetted, we
don't have to check out anyone.  We just go in, investigate the current
policies, processes, procedures, commissions and the like and start getting
them in alignment with The Book and the specific industry."
   Some of the salespeople were a bit resistive to change.  Madeleine was
willing to work with them a bit, but still took a pretty tough line on
getting in policy.  Most of them saw the light right away; after all, with
optimum customer service (help desk, warranty work and the like), they had
even more sales tools at their disposal.
   While we could look at the JRD stats any time we wished, hearing what
was behind them made a difference.  So far, she'd gone into eleven
companies right behind our oversight visits.  Half had already shown
significant improvement -- more than 5% above their average -- and the rest
were implementing the policies and processes.
   She told us, "Fillmore Sales Relations has shown the most improvement.
They're already up 50%.  I've got a sneaking suspicion they're using the
same policies and processes with their clients.  It works very well, so
they get more business -- and larger accounts."
   ------
   BOB
   Made sense to me.  Apply to your clients what works for you -- novel
idea, right?
   We hopped out of the Jacuzzi before we got completely waterlogged. 
Dermot showed no shyness in displaying his interest in the two
gloriously-nekkid ladies waving their fannies in front of us.  I didn't
mind them waving either, so I saluted them graciously.  Hehehehe.
   We suited up and took off to Kansas City for dinner.  They must be in
competition with Dallas, because there was a steakhouse at least every
block.  No problem, some long-suffering social secretary had already made
us reservations.
   Kinda fancy.  The other diners were definitely not so interested in
their own dinners they weren't watching these two lovelies.  Dermot was in
full Little Person mode -- with his red hair, top-of-the-line manners and a
deep voice, he looked every inch (48 of them) a gentleman.  Me, I just
tagged along and basked in their beauty and wonderful smell.
   The ladies had only a couple "wardrobe malfunctions" during dinner so we
weren't asked to leave.  I think some of the departing customers had passed
the word because by the time we were ready to leave, there wasn't an empty
chair for several tables deep around us.  I knew they weren't looking at
me.
   With our garble-shield up, we could talk about anything and everything.
Dermot was working his young butt off.  He was working on the history for
Eileen's clothes and jewelry, working with an enhancement team and was one
of George's computer nerds.  He told us, "George can teach a hell of a lot
in a couple months.  Having 24/7 available doesn't hurt either."
   He and Madeleine had gone together on every visit to the various
companies' sales departments.  Besides the probes, gestalts and
_inspections_, he could wander innocently around and ask questions which
suddenly penetrated right down to an issue, problem or a Successful Action.
Innocent?  Looks are deceiving.
   Kat tactfully asked about Riona, Alyssa and the O'Banain men.  Madeleine
told us, "They're all doing wonderfully well.  The four of them used to be
a bit shy, but they've blossomed out into outgoing, wonderful adults.  They
take turns staying at each other's places."
   Dermot noted, "Of course, Mom has to check in with them every so often
to ensure they're not abusing each other.  Must take a lot of corrective
actions, 'cause it seems to take all night."
   Madeleine flushed and said, "Someone's gotta learn 'em right." We
cackled gleefully away.
   She and Dermot had slipped into the Donovan household like feet into
one's favorite slippers.  Not a bit of friction.  Dermot tattled again when
he told us, "The housekeeper has to dust her bedcovers.  I think she's used
it twice since we've been there.  Hehehehe."
   Mad said hotly, "And you don't seem to spend much time in yours, either,
young man!"
   Dermot grinned.  "Yeh.  I keep getting invited on campouts."
   After we settled down from laughing, I asked how Siobhan and Evan were
doing.  We hadn't actually been "social" with them for quite a while. 
Madeleine told us, "Great!  For some reason, she doesn't mind four men
admiring her all at once.  Then again, none of us do."
   Dermot said, "And every once in a while, the girls kick us all out so
they can have a ladies' night.  Good thing we have good air circulation in
the place, or they'd suffocate."
   Kat looked interested.  Bet she'd get an invitation soon to one of those
nights.
   The ladies had a final set of wardrobe malfunctions as they were
leaving. Maybe that was why a good dozen forks ended up on the floor and
several beverage glasses spilled.  Dermot and I were walking behind them
and didn't see what happened so were "stuck" with admiring the two gently
swaying derrieres.  Ah, well.
   In the honoring room, Madeleine was unmerciful.  Two Journeys didn't
phase her in the least.  I did quit a bit of bird watching; you know,
looking for the red-headed, double-breasted bed thrasher.
   Around a half hour after we started, Kat started shrieking and
screaming. Dayum, she didn't let up for an hour straight.  Madeleine
grinned and told me, "Betcha she's finding out about the Dermot Special. 
It's, em, invigorating." I didn't ask.  Whatever it was, I probably
couldn't do it.
   We ended up on a four-way Journey on some sweet waves of delight.  A
nice tsunami blind-sided us and swept us out to Mars.  Nice.
   Okay, you could call Mars red.  The Mars rovers were still going strong.
We resisted the temptation to mock up some Martian bodies in front of the
cameras and contented ourselves with dusting off their solar panels and
tightening up a couple loose connections.  JPL will be very happy.
   There was actually plenty of water (as ice) around the poles.  I suppose
it could be melted and spread out.  Since Mars' gravity was so low, it
couldn't hold an atmosphere well, so someone would have to do some serious
research on how to keep it if we decided to terraform it.
   Something to toss into the idea arena.  Being close to Earth was both a
blessing and a hazard.
   We did a quick sweep for Celian installations and found a couple.  They
were similar to the outposts but were airtight with their own atmosphere
generators.  Had they been observing the wildlife there, too?
   About then, Madeleine nailed my poke spot really good.  Apparently
Dermot was doing something unspeakable to Kat's body, because she moaned
and groaned, too.  Ah, well.  Live fast, love hard, die very old and leave
a beautiful memory, right?
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Monday 7/31)
   Yeh, the Dermot Special was everything the rumors had said -- and more.
Try it fore and aft at the same time!
   Mars would take a lot of work to be habitable outside.  Put it on the
"maybe" list.  Betcha we could find more hospitable places where our bodies
could actually live outdoors.
   We had breakfast in New York City in an Irish restaurant called
Gilligan's.  Somehow, we four fit right in.  Grin.  It was really good food
and good company, too.  We immediately put it on our favorites list.  Now,
how about lunch and dinner?
   Dermot and Bob had survived the night.  I wasn't sure if Madeleine and I
had until after breakfast.  A bit wobbly in the legs, we were!
   Well, they had to take off for work.  To the delight of the other
restaurant patrons, they vanished in a cloud of leprechaun smoke!  Bob
carefully explained, "They've gotta go polish the pots o gold at the end of
the rainbows."
   One (somewhat sober) man said, "I'd rather find her at the end of a
rainbow than a pot o gold!"
   He got a lot of agreement.  I told them, "Who knows?  She's single and
is only 437 years old.  Might make a good match." With a straight face,
too. Bob was proud of me.
   Clann Meeting time again.  Dayum, didn't we just have one of these?
   Bob got first dibs on the floor.  He told us, "We're expanding all
right. We don't even have a decent guess at how many ones of us we have
now, much less how many are tagged or how many are already in the
enhancement process.  I guess we'd better shut everything down until we get
an accurate count, right?"
   He got roundly booed, as expected.  Margaret gnashed her teeth and
_Irished_ him really good!
   Bob just grinned and shrugged it off.  He said, "It doesn't matter. 
It's not *your* problem at all, and there's no need to follow it real
closely.  As long as you train the new folk in the proper security
processes and procedures and log them in as they're trained, we're safe. 
That's all that really matters for this.
   "Go for it!  I know we've got either ones of us or tagged people in the
United States, Mexico, Canada, almost every country in Europe and lots in
Asia.  Let us in the Clanns Council concern ourselves with the statistics
-- you folks just go full out for expansion.
   "Train 'em properly, get 'em hooked up with a Clann or help them start a
Clann and ensure their particular talents or specialties are in the
appropriate database.  We'll organize behind you."
   He introduced five Krav Maga specialists from various parts of the
world. Two men and three women, they knew what exactly what they were
getting into.
   Phillip, the group leader, went over what they'd developed in
cooperation with a Skunk Works team.  No, they didn't have a mechanical
record and playback, but each specialist had several hundred special nodes
for us to contact.
   The node connected to specific memory sets with almost every perception
available.  With the checksheet, one of us could learn every kata, exercise
and Krav Maga routine by duplicating the perceptions such as muscle
movement, kinetics, joint and body position and force exerted.
   Yeh, one could probably get a perfect duplication that way.  In the
experiments they'd run, 80% of the students got a full pass the first time
they came in for a proficiency examination.  Not shabby at all.
   He recommended the men _link_ with one of the men and the women with the
women.  "Male and female skeletal structures are different.  Most of us
have at least played around with switching bodies and have found that out
almost right away.  As the body goes through puberty to maturity, the
differences become more pronounced.  If this all works as we think, once
one of you learn it thoroughly, you too can pass it on through a _link_."
   He told us as we learned the routines, we'd have to learn when and how
to apply them.  The object in any confrontation was to make the opponent
change their minds.  Use just enough force the correct way to do so.  Just
our willingness to use force would often be enough to make it happen.
   "We can tell almost immediately what their intentions are.  If they're
really out to do you in, we've got a myriad of ways to defeat them.  While
the Skunk Works hasn't even started experimented with causing immediate
organism death, I'm betting it wouldn't take much.
   "Perhaps all it would take is a reverse firewall like we use to push out
a spirit who's taken over our body.  Only in this case, we push out *all*
life.  Might take a shake or so, but that's probably fast enough."
   Beyond all the self-defense reasons was the fact that our bodies needed
exercise to stay healthy.  The katas and routines would help that a lot,
since they tended to use almost all the body's muscles at one time or
another.
   Hmm.  Here I'd thought a Journey a day kept the doctor away!  Hehehehe.
Guess I knew what Bob and I would be doing several mornings a week.
   ------
   BOB (Tuesday 8/1)
   Yesterday, I'd asked for a full Clanns Council meeting to go over the
direction we wanted to go.  Right at midnight, we met (virtually) in the
RRK offices in Chicago.  Yow, well over 200 spirits from 75-some Clanns
around the world.  Granted, most were in the United States, but still.
   First I asked if anyone wanted to be Ceann Mor.  Seemed no one did, so I
was stuck with it.  So, I went over some basics, _"Thank you for the vote
of confidence.  Some of you have been free for maybe a couple days, others
of us have been around for almost eight months now.  Not a long time for a
group to come together, find out what's happening with the individuals and
make deep plans for the future._
   _"But what we decide now will set our course for quite a while to come.
We've talked before -- at least some of us -- on how we should handle the
technologies from Selene City as we discover them.  Plus, how do we handle
the technologies we've found dealing with the spirit?_
   _"We've pretty much determined we should have some safe havens here on
Earth plus several to many to thousands of Human colonies off-planet.  I
don't think that's changed much.  Let's talk about how to deal with the
business and other interactions with the rest of Earth while we gather the
economic, material and personnel resources to carry this off.  I see
several ways of doing this."_
   I laid them out much as we'd discussed at home on Sunday.  First,
obfuscation of the manufacturing and delivery similar to the way Cullen
Enterprises picked up and delivered the seminar manuals.  We'd stay
clandestine in our operations as we were doing now and hide the connections
between the companies and us.
   Second: Mock up "little green men and women" as extraterrestrials
looking for trade -- what would we trade for?
Last: Straight-out announcement and use of the technologies (via the
manufacturing companies) including the use of (probably) off-world
manufacturing and delivery by teleportation.  We'd come out of the closet
and announce our existence as free spirits and disclose everything.
As I'd expected, there was plenty of discussion.  What it came down to
was we couldn't really trust Man as a group to do what we'd consider
rational.
   Put a bunch of crabs in a bucket, and they won't just crawl out.  If one
tries, the others pull him back.  Man as we knew it would immediately
attempt to attack and destroy something too different, especially if they
were stronger or more able.
   Politicians and preachers would joyfully froth at the mouth as they
denounced us as the cause of all Man's troubles.  Mrs.  Grundy would shriek
in agony over our customs.  Everyone would try to destroy us.  As a group,
Man had a dayum poor history.
   Consensus was to stay clandestine and use smoke and mirrors in our
dealings.  Yes, we needed lots of cash to help build our safe havens and
colonies; we could simply take what we needed or steal the technology, but
that was unethical for us.
   Make lots, no, tons of money legally, ethically and entirely unrelated
to the Clanns.  The Clanns would merely be innocuous organizations of
like-minded people.
   Once we had off-world colonies established and pretty much thriving,
they'd be our back-door escape routes.  That could take years, of course.
Like Clann Cullen, we'd need to have the contingencies worked out already.
   Perhaps then we would dare to expose ourselves, but don't count on it.
Even all the good works we could do in the meantime wouldn't outweigh Man's
apparent insanity against something new and apparently so threatening.
   So, the decision was made.
   To keep the lawyers happy, we had an election for the rest of the Clanns
Council officers.  I got elected President -- no last-minute reprieve.  The
VP was from Halifax, the Secretary from Dallas and the Treasurer from
Chicago.  No committees yet.  Grin.
   The Secretary got charged with writing up the election minute and
coordinating with the lawyers for any bank account and other legal stuff.
Should take only a couple minutes of his spare time.
   I brought up the organizing of our rapidly-expanding numbers and said
much the same as I had Monday night about letting the expansion run as fast
as needed and we'd organize behind it.
   We dragged Mario in to go over a possible setup for exchanging
information, especially being able to locate specific talents or
specialties across the world.
   His idea was to use the United States' currently-defined major
metropolitan areas -- over 700 of them.  Other countries probably had the
same type of economic or geographic divisions.
   Each area would have a central clearing house for all its Clanns.  Each
Clann would keep as much or as little information in-house as they wished.
Similar to the underground secure network we were using at JRD, the areas
would gather the information and make it available on a continental and
world-wide basis.
   With remote operations, all we really needed to have is a chromium-steel
security network across the public Internet.  Mario pointed out, "The
Celian computer and networking technology might make all this completely
moot.  From the little we've seen, just one of the 'personal' computers
we've worked with could handle everything.  While we're looking into all
that, we'll still need to work on the structure and organization."
   Yeh.  If we took the average we'd run into in the Burbank area of about
10% with Potential, we'd have something like just under 2 million ones of
us just in the Los Angeles - Long Beach - Riverside metro area.  Now, toss
in our recently-found success in enhancing spirits with almost no
Potential, and that number could double, triple or more.
   No matter how many, even we ended up with 50% of the population, we were
betting the other 50% would still attempt to destroy us if they found out
-- even if it meant destroying the Earth in the process.
   Cynical?  Just because we're not paranoid doesn't mean it's an unhealthy
attitude in calculating the downside.  Maybe, once we've got the escape
routes, we'd give it a shot.  However, that was in the future.
   ------
   (Wednesday 8/2)
   Yeh, I routed out everyone early.  Mario and Sherry, too.  If we'd had a
pet, I'd have woken it up!  Time to start the exercises.
   Kat and I had still been running several times a week so we weren't in
bad condition.  These exercises were a bit different but were still similar
to the stretching and warm-up routines we'd been doing.
   Mario and Sherry pretended to moan and groan a lot, but worked with a
will.  I reminded Sherry, "If you keep on doing this, someday you might be
able to keep up with me during your bi-monthly shagging."
   She groaned again and tried to hit me.  She fell over first.
   We finished in a half hour.  The specialists had told us to ease into
it, not kill ourselves all at once.  Mario and the girls immediately fell
into the Jacuzzi to ease out the aches.  Sherry moaned and groaned.  I
think Kat was faking the aches and pains; she probably just wanted to sit
on one of the water jets while I fixed breakfast!
   Miracles do happen; there was plenty of breakfast supplies so I made a
small breakfast for us.  After all, they'd told us to be careful of
over-eating after the exercises.
   After breakfast, Mario took off to SW while the rest of us hit the
books. We were all well into the last detail manual, so another day or so
should finish us up.
   The three of us zipped up to Chicago to meet with RRK.  More meetings;
seems that's all an administrator does.  Well, The Book said a manager's
hat was mainly coordinating activities along the Admin Scale, not giving
orders.
   We found Amanda, Richard and Trevor in the conference room and joined
in. In the last two weeks, they'd all finished up their teleportation
checksheets and were having fun with the hologram technical bulletin.
   Clann Tanner was going full out on recruiting and training.  They'd
found an additional 30 Potentials right around the area and had enhanced
them all.  Almost all were from Northwestern University.  Richard told us,
"That's where we looked first.  We figured since it was going to be our
first line for recruiting the manufacturing company managers and so on, we
might as well start there."
   There were three other newly-established Clanns spreading outwards from
them with another five in the establishment process.  Good; lots of growth.
   I went over the expansion policy -- let it rip.  Trevor noted, "That'll
work great.  Way too many of the companies we've investigated for
investments put all the 'corrective action' first before they even started
into an area.  No flexibility and no on-site judgment.  We stayed out of
them and, sure enough, they started going under."
   We had a three-hour discussion of the Clanns Council decision on our
operating basis.  They spotted the reasoning right away and agreed with it.
Amanda said, "Northwestern's pretty liberal overall and the graduates are
pretty flexible.  On the other hand, the Chicago area's full of different
ethnics and there's continual hassling going on between them.  Not just
gang warfare and things like that, often there's outright rioting.
   "Individually, there's usually few issues except among the most bigoted.
Toss a couple of them together and there's always fireworks; doesn't seem
to matter if it's ethnics, religion or sports."
   Yeh.  Well, it was lunchtime.  Kat suggested Gilligan's in NYC, and they
were agreeable to try something new.  We put on our leprechaun cleas
(Sherry as a Spanish leprechaun?  Why not?) and ported to a convenient
doorway down the block.
   We recognized a couple patrons from our last breakfast, and most of the
staff recognized Kat and me.  They applauded our apparel; Kat announced,
"These are some kinfolk from the Outback of Chicago.  Sorry, all the ladies
are attached."
   We set up our garble shield, ordered and chattered away.  Mainly we
discussed ways and means to set up clandestine manufacturing and
distribution facilities.
   Clandestine in this case meant there would be extremely hard-to-trace
legal links back to any of the Clanns.  We might not be able to avoid some,
since we planned on using a lot of Clann people in them.
   Trevor suggested, "We've got our cleas on now.  With very little effort,
everyone in any of the business who's one of us can look completely
different.  Betcha our clever Clann lawyers and, em, other resources could
come up with some very stable identities which would pass a lot of
scrutiny."
   Yep, definitely something to look into.  Sherry suggested, "Clann
Reynolds is the only one I'm aware of that's running a Probe Patrol.  Is
there any reason to limit that?  If the area Clanns got together and ran
their own, they should be able to keep a real close eye on things."
   Why not?  The Chicago metro area had about 10 million people.  That
should yield well over a million ones of us.  We had a brief chat with Ana
about it.
   She told us, _"No reason in the world why there can't be multiples. 
Maybe each metro area could combine on one or even narrow it down to
several Clanns.  Ramontheeye has been getting fifteen or twenty requests a
day which is a gradual rise over the last couple months._
   _"If those requests could be handled locally, it would actually give
better results since the prober would be more familiar with the area.  All
I know about Chicago is that the wind blows._
   _"The private requests like we're doing for JRD could be handled the
same way.  Paid or unpaid, it's up to the area.  If we're gonna be doing
more security checking for potential threats, the more probers we have, the
better off we all are._
   _"The hat's pretty straightforward.  We've got the technical bulletins
and checksheets already set up; I'd just need to take an hour or so to
write up what I do as the organizer."_
   I told her to go ahead and write up her hat.  I didn't think the Clanns
Council would have any objections; in fact, there was a long queue of new
spirits wanting to get trained and get some experience in probes and
dossiers.
   Handled that.  Amanda said they'd take it up with Charles who by now was
the unofficial area Ceann.  Worked for us.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Lunch was great.  We're definitely gonna check out the dinner menu. 
After we were done, we departed in flash of smoke and mirrors.  Of course
the patrons enjoyed it; it was a free magic show, after all.
   Back at RRK, we went over the recruiting and training program.  Amanda
told us, "Van Nuys Temps is really good.  We've even got a couple
relationships firing up." Now how could that happen?  Grin.
   With the obfuscation objective firmly in mind, we did another hour on
different issues.  RRK was funding the entire project; the lawyers and
accountants were hiding or obfuscating it however they could.
   They'd been aggressively recruiting locally, with a lot from
Northwestern.  Trevor said, "We got a list of the June graduates and went
through it.  Most already had positions, but a good 25% either didn't have
offers or were taking the summer off.  There's been some good pickings."
   RRK was working through a couple dozen employment agencies and had
established their own with a dozen local ones of us.  Its main work was
sorting out resumes, doing interviews and deciding on who would work out.
   Amanda said, "Interestingly enough, by the time an applicant gets to the
interview part, a good 50% are willing to relocate.  The way we word it,
they can visit their home towns frequently at company expense -- zero -- as
often as they like, so they wouldn't be breaking any ties.
   "We flat-out ask if they'd be willing to work off-planet.  With the
Space Station and other initiatives in the news a lot, we simply say we're
doing long-term recruiting for private companies.  We get about half of the
50% willing to do it."
   They really could pick and choose whomever they wanted.  We didn't mind
at all if someone was "over-qualified" for most positions that were open in
the mundane sector; that was a figment of HR's imagination anyway.
   When an applicant had been filtered down to the interview level, one or
more of the staff would port to their home and do the interview there. 
Non-Disclosure Agreements made the offer more interesting.
   The staff doing the interview had full authorization to hire them on the
spot.  If both sides were in agreement (the money was rarely an issue), the
applicant was in.
   Richard said, "Pretty much the first thing we do after the hiring
paperwork is to drop-ship them The Book.  Studying that is their first
task; usually we have several applicants get together for mutual checkouts
which also results in them getting to know each other."
   They'd hired 75 so far; over half had Potential and were getting
enhanced by their local Clann.  Once the new person had finished The Book,
they got another interview to map out their interests fully and devise a
study course.  Once we actually got anything operational (several months
from now?), they could relocate as needed.  With the proper study course
(soon to include Sperk and Phane), they'd fit right into the Organizing
Board.
   Ambitious, true.  Necessary, true.  We'd need lots of competent people.
The real bigots would get filtered out before or in the interviews (the
staff did a full probe and dossier beforehand) so we'd get the best ones
possible.
   ------
   All right!  We were done for now, so we booted Sherry out to go harass
Mario or whatever she wished.  Bob and I took off to Akron to visit Mick
and Nora.  The social secretaries had plans for them!
   They were lookin' really good!  Mick had been casting Irishman eyes on
me every time we were around each other, so I ensured he got a good feel of
my arse when we hugged.  I lightly pushed a couple stiff nipples into his
chest and got an immediate response from Down Under.  I thought our plans
would work out just fine.
   Nora took a couple of minutes to recover from Bob's hug.  He hadn't
spared the tongue or the Wand up against her.  I'd say she was willing.
   Yeh, we talked shop for a while.  Clann Flanagan was going great guns,
too.  They were up to almost 60 full Clann members with more being enhanced
every day.
   There were an additional ten potential Clanns throughout the Akron area
with more being planned up towards and including Cleveland.  Excellent
growth!  Their metro area had about 3 million people so they had a
reasonable base to draw on.
   Mick and Nora were doing a lot of enhancements, helping out with the
Reynolds' genealogy and being helpful where they could in the Clann.  The
Skunk Works had already been out recruiting them for positions in the
manufacturing operations; with their background in construction, they'd
probably be well suited for several positions.
   Being lazy, this time we did a virtual tour around the area.  There was
enough growth and construction going on so the Akron-Cleveland area was
still a viable area in which to live and work.
   Their particular neighborhood was in excellent shape.  With their
example of keeping their home very well maintained and up to date, the rest
of the neighborhood seemed to follow suit.
   Nora said, "There's only an occasional new home construction going on.
Most are renos and there's a couple major renos going on almost all the
time."
   Good.  I knew they were happy with the environment and with their Clann
activities.  They sure didn't have to sit around being bored.
   So, back to Gilligan's for dinner!  Gotta check it out, right?  Mick and
Bob mocked up being old, frail leprechauns while Nora and I were young and
beautiful -- of course.
   As we went in, we ensured the staff knew we were "really" the guests
from before.  We got great service, had great food and had a grand time.
   Bob and I put on a short dance show; why not?  With the in-house
"orchestra" of several violins and bagpipe (yes, that's right), we got some
good Irish dance music.  Bob and Mick slobbered over us like the standard
dirty old Irishman.  The local dirty old Irishmen liked it and sucked down
the booze.
   Oh, yeh.  They loved the Irishman's drunken hat routine.  The manager
was willing to buy us our dinner for the entertainment.  No, we insisted on
paying; we didn't want to start some expectations.  If we entertained, that
was fine.  Just don't expect it.
   I wouldn't say Mick and Nora were plastered by the time we left (more
smoke and mirrors!), but they sure weren't feeling any pain!
   We took them back to our place in California to bask in the Jacuzzi. 
Poor Nora (hah!) got the full dose of the new water jets.  She was so out
of it she just sat there for a couple seconds with her body shield cut in
before she levitated her (quite cute) arse outta there.
   Mick had the good sense not to laugh, so he survived.  I cut the jets
back down to "tolerable" and let the warm water cook some of the booze out
of them.  At least I tried; they both fell asleep while we _chatted_
outside and _showed_ them around.
   They _pulled_ their bodies out and laid them on the appropriate beds to
recover a bit before some more festivities.
   Does booze make an Irishman horny or are they always that way?  When
Mick woke up, I found out what an old-fashioned Reynolds-style Irish
shagging was like.  Several times.
   From the sounds coming from Bob's room, Nora wasn't wasting any time,
either.  Bob had his own version of an Irish shagging!
   ------
   (Thurs 8/3)
   One good thing about honoring a lot of different people was we could go
back to some favorite restaurants, and they'd think it was new.  Grin. 
Gilligan's was *really* on our list as a favorite, but we wouldn't wear it
out.
   The social secretaries' secretaries (Sarah Stapley and Julio Ortiz) had
the main task of finding interesting places to visit and to eat.  For every
winner, they got $50.  They spent a lot of time on the Internet!  They'd
get the to-be-honored from Sherry and me and recommend a place -- then make
any reservations.
   We went back to Dallas to sample their breakfast steak and eggs.  Yow! A
sixteen-ounce T-bone and three eggs (each) went a long ways towards
bringing Nora and me back to life.  Mick and Bob just grinned at each other
and scarfed theirs down.
   After a 10-minute stroll to help settle things down, Mick and Nora took
off (no smoke this time, just mirrors).  Bob and I zipped back to
California for our oversight visit.
   ------
   BOB
   Van Nuys Temps had a permanent staff of around 100 and had 700 temps in
various positions around Southern California.  Of course the office was in
Van Nuys.  We knew they were working pretty closely with RRK (some were
*really* close!) and had several ones of us on staff.
   We took Mario and Sherry along; Mario was happy at a change of pace for
a bit.  Almost as we expected, the President and the COO were recent ones
of us.  Good, it cut out a lot of bullshit.
   We got right at it.  The probe reports showed quite a few illegals among
the temps, some expected time card, em, enhancements and things like that.
We just showed the report (highly confidential of course) to them and they
said they'd have it all handled one way or another within a week.  Good
enough.
   The company found and placed temps in pretty much any specialty from
office workers to computer programmers to executives (Rent-a-CFO!).  They
cross-linked with The Clean Place, Clean Pools and other JRD companies so
they weren't stepping on each other's toes.
   The books, facilities and customers appeared to be in excellent shape,
so we didn't concern ourselves at all about them.  We just got right into
the long-term Clanns Council purpose and how they fit in.
   They'd already gotten a briefing from their Ceann about the method we'd
decided on using, so it wasn't a surprise.  Since they were an employment
agency, they had contacts with other similar enterprises across the U.S.,
Canada, Mexico and several in Europe and Asia.  Now *those* are some
communication lines!
   While the RRK agency was working on the top-tier recruiting, they were
after the middle and lower tier.  They were looking for supervisors,
machine operators, truckers, packers, shippers, office administrators,
admin assistants, office personnel and the rest of the posts needed to make
an operation run.
   Any upper-level people they ran across, they immediately routed to RRK.
They had quite a few applicants who would ordinarily be classed as
"over-qualified" they passed on.
   They had branch offices all around Los Angeles County and were already
slated to open up some in Ventura County (west of Los Angeles).  They'd
scarfed up several applicants already for their own use.
   Part of their application process now included willingness to relocate,
get training, and some subtle questions about "remote" locations.  They'd
found a couple dozen already who'd survived all those hurdles.
   They'd been place in the "usual" temp positions and were flagged to be
activated in the training program when the facilities were ready -- namely
the computers.  The languages would at first be passed off as cultural
adjustment for some remote locations.  Since the language training would be
on the company's dime, most of the qualified applicants had already
expressed their willingness to get acquainted with another language or so.
   Yeh, we could see already we'd be doing a lot of coordination among
various places.  Speed up the facilities activations (which ones?),
increase the hiring, decrease the mid-level recruiting and other things to
get things meshing reasonably well.
   At least we had some bucks to cushion things.  If we had a couple
hundred people take a paid leave of absence for a couple months while we
were getting locations ready, it was no big deal.
   We took several of the staff (ones of us) to lunch at Erie's Tavern in
Pasadena.  Julio and Sarah had hit a good one; none had been there before.
   John and Patrick had trained the managers well.  The service was
excellent, the food was excellent and we all had a great time.  The manager
wasn't able to talk Kat and me into doing a dance routine, but the
Irishman's drunken hat did make a guest appearance.  Apparently, there's a
different public for the lunch crowd than for the dinner crowd, because
they acted as if they'd never seen it before.  Fun.
   Okay, back to work in Van Nuys.  We did a final hour's wrap up on
coordination planning, passed out the Sean seminar cards then took off back
home.
   We "let" Mario go back to work while we explored the currents in the
pool for a half hour.  The back of the house had turned orange over the
past couple days.  How did that happen?  I protested my innocence, but
Sherry and Kat beat me anyway.
   ------
   Mama and Papa Sonora appeared on our doorstep!  Yes!  They'll be
wonderful to honor.  We took off on a pre-dinner tour of the various sites
of current interest.
   The geologists in the sinkhole were drilling cores (quite cautiously
this time) and having a good old time.  Mama (Maria) and Papa (Manuel) had
been to the circus with the rest of us.  Bellana had "sold" ten "programs"
and was now figuring out what to provide.  A list of names?  Other
"services?" Well, she and her buyers were in active negotiation.  Grin.
   Mama and Papa were quite content to go by those names.  Mama said,
"There's thousands of Marias and Manuels but only *one* Mama and Papa
Sonora!"
   The Colorado outpost hadn't been abandoned by a long shot.  The white
board said, "Level 5 -- Mid-Range User." Sounded good to me.  One of the
Skunk Works engineers was so engrossed in a Sperk lesson we could have
ported the entire place to the Antarctic, and he wouldn't have noticed
until his eyelids froze open.  Heh.  Guess we do have some competition for
equipment.
   Dinner was in Vancouver.  The social secretaries had found a nice
restaurant on Moberly Road overlooking False Creek and the Cambie Bridge.
Good food, good view and good company.
   Their renovation and repair business was going strong, just like they
were.  With Bellana so active in the enhancement team and Lucia working
with the audit team, they were working the business by themselves.  They
didn't mind.  Mama said, "The girls love what they're doing, they're
supporting themselves, paying some rent and keeping their rooms and noses
clean.  What more can we ask?"
   They and Reynolds Construction (dayum, I need to have a chat with Mother
and Father) were finishing up the last dribs and drabs of repair work from
the January earthquake.  Six months sounds like a lot for a
homeowner/landlord to wait?  Nat and I had seen broken windows and plumbing
several years old.
   Being Hispanic, Papa's business attracted quite a few other Hispanics.
Some were legal, some weren't.  He didn't worry about it a lot; he just
helped the illegals either get legal or get out.
   The better ones he was steering to Van Nuys Temps for possible
off-planet work.  He and Mama were considering it themselves.  He said,
"It's not as if it's a long commute back home to see the gang.  While the
facilities we've seen so far have been metal and synthetics, we can work
with those just as well as wood.  As you know, most reno and repair work
has little to do with carpentry."
   Yeh, we knew.  Maybe 10% was wood working.  Bellana could stay with the
Merrills really easily if Mama and Papa were out of there, and Lucia didn't
have a nostalgic longing to have her own room, so they'd already indicated
they wouldn't mind actually moving in with their sweeties.
   The Merrills didn't have any problems with it, either; they had two
apartments with just the right number of bedrooms so they wouldn't be
bumping elbows in the mornings.  In fact, they literally had two bedrooms
to spare, if needed.
   Both Mama and Papa were itching to start learning Celian languages and
technologies.  A couple of their crew had spent time (remotely) patching
water pipes in Selene City, and everyone was fascinated by the
construction.
   Mama said, "Yeh, even I was excited.  There's nuts, bolts, screws and
rivets in the individual rooms and such, but the major framework is
actually one solid piece of metal.  Looks as if the joints were formed and
merged together; there's not a bolt, rivet or weld joint in any of it."
   Being nosy, they'd found quite a few of what looked like welding
machines.  Near as they could tell, they didn't really weld, but changed
the metal (with gap filler as needed) so it reformed into one seamless run.
Even _looking_ deeply into the join, it looked like a solid piece.
   Papa told us, "Probably the same equipment could cut a joint cleanly so
a girder or such could be removed.  We've heard some creaks and groans as
the place warmed up, but all of it seemed to be from the interior
construction.  Near as we can tell, the structural metal has a coefficient
of expansion so close to zero it might as well be zero.
   "Across one span of 2 kilometers, there's maybe a five-millimeter
difference between what it was at -300 and now at plus 70.  Shit!  Ya,
know, we should look at recruiting ironworkers.  Betcha those Indians who
work the high steel wouldn't mind being a couple million miles above
Jupiter."
   He was right.  I made note to suggest it to Van Nuys Temps and RRK.
   In the honoring room, Mama was hotter than any pistol I'd ever heard of!
She told me, "I've wanted to do this since the first day I laid eyes on
you. We were starving, but I'd have starved another day to get you where we
are now."
   Well, I tried to show my appreciation.  Her childhood Little Italy must
have had some interesting customs, because she trotted out some stuff that
squeezed me dry.  From the sounds Kat was making, Papa knew a bit, too. 
Hehehe.
   A final sweet Journey left us beyond the Asteroid Belt, so we looked
around.  We found plenty of spirits dashing about surveying for facilities,
so apparently they weren't satisfied quite yet.  They were tagging each one
with a sealed, insulated container of seeds which kept itself warm from the
inner _touch_.  Dayum clever, those folk!
   Selene City was up to temperature and pressure.  There were signs pretty
much everywhere, "Welcome to Selene City.  BYOB." It was ready for
tourists!
   Mama wasn't interested right then.  She thumped my poke spot soundly and
announced, _"It'll be there later.  Right now, let's get it on!  Kat's
Babies Within need another booster shot, too!"_
   Tough job, being a Ceann.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Friday 8/4)
   Breakfast in Oakland suited everyone just fine.  Papa had worked some of
his old Spanish loving tricks and had right tuckered me out!  Mama and I
had to get our strength back.
   Enough fun for now.  Mama and Papa both had stuff scheduled so we went
our own ways.  Bob and I zipped back home and put in study time with
Sherry.
   Hot dayum!  We'd all finished the last detail manual.  We promptly
informed Sean, who congratulated us heartily.  Maggie and informed us,
_"When one of the Cullen Enterprises people finish the last manual, they
get a Soo Laid as partial reward.  Now, when do we schedule yours?"_
   Hmm.  A hurried muttering among the social secretaries showed everyone
had next Wednesday evening open.  It was a date!
   Bob would have four women to deal with and I had the same plus Sean. 
Dayum, who's gonna give up first?  Luckily it wasn't gonna be a contest --
or was it?  Hehehehe.  Knowing Maggie, she'd have something really twisted
-- and we'd all love it.
   Ana _knocked_ and told us, _"The U.S.  finally came through with the
Guerreros' and the Medinas' visas.  Looks as if they're finally legal.  The
Medinas have been ready to come up for the last month.  I knew you worried
about them, so I thought I'd let you know.  If you wish, you can thank me
in person someday soon.  Hehehehe."_ She could do a really suggestive
spirit-cackle; she must have been taking lessons from Maggie.  [The Medinas
are the Cabo couple who want to go to mechanics' school in the U.S.]
   Bob told her, _"I'll have to check with the bosses, but I'd be more than
happy to thank you and thank you and thank you and thank you in person. 
How's Don holding up?"_
   _"He's not.  He wears out after six times, the wuss!"_
   Poor fella.  Such a problem he has.  Sherry and I got in a quick huddle
with her, Sarah and Julio and came up with something a bit down the line.
Maybe "Daddy" would be interested in a rematch?  If he lived that long.
   ------
   All right.  We (Bob, Sherry and I) decided to make the long trek to
Selene City to try out our lunar legs.  We upped the sensitivity on our
body shields, probed around for a clear spot then zipped right on up.
   Not too bad to start with.  Kinda like the Custom Cloud Cushion.  We
gradually dropped our shields down and joined the rest of the tourists.
   Moving around physically was a challenge.  There was less friction on
the floor, we bounced and the body mass still was the same.  To be
expected, but we had to get used to it.
   It was nicely warm with a slight breeze.  There was almost no smell to
the atmosphere, just a touch of metallic odor.  Betcha they'll fire up the
Central Park Real Soon Now and have lilacs or something giving off nice
smellums.
   Just like remote _touches_, it did feel different in person.  Within a
half-hour, we'd gotten somewhat used to the gravity.  We did bang right
into several walls, though.  Nothing got dented; we'd set up our body
shields so they'd be pretty cushy.
   The doorways were a bit higher than we were used to (the Cels ran over
two meters as adults), but pretty much everything else "felt" okay.  We
tried out a few chairs in one of the offices; they felt okay to both Bob
and me.  Sherry's feet dangled a bit.  Her legs were a touch shorter than
ours, but they still reached the floor most of the time.  Hehehehe.
   It wasn't dead quiet, either.  We could hear the air move when we were
by some of the ventilator outlets and a distant hum from the fans.  I knew
those fans were very efficient, so I chalked it up to being deliberate.
   Not everything was metal.  The floor was covered with something like
indoor-outdoor carpeting with plenty of traction (if one had the weight)
while the walls were covered (mostly) with some sort of fabric.
   If we stomped our feet, we could hear them a bit but there weren't
echoes like we'd get in a large hard-walled room.
   The Central Park had real dirt so far as we could tell (Probably Earth
dirt.  I'd let the botanists and other tech-heads tell us).  By the time
they got some grass and other vegetation in, it would be a really nice
place.  Probably wouldn't have to worry about the Pete Simms of the world!
   Be Jaysus!  We were here!  One major step in our survival plan.  It was
gonna be one hell of a ride from now on.
   Chapter 14
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 8/5)
   Time for a wedding!  Rodrigo Fuerte and Alona Himenez were tying the
knot in El Tule today.
   Sherry and I had spent time over the last several days ensuring we had
exactly the right clothes.  Fancy, of course, but we didn't want to
distract from the bride.
   We'd ended up with 90% cleas then said what the hell and went 100%.  It
gave a new meaning to the term "having one's ass hanging out in the wind."
Grin.
   Alona had sent out snail-mail invitations to the local people they
wanted.  For the other Clanns, we just spread the word.  We didn't have or
need addresses for 98% of them anyway.
   By the time we ported down Saturday morning, there was an area the size
of a Burbank city block almost filled with party goodies.  Hot food, cold
food, drinks (alcoholic and otherwise), plates, cutlery, barbeques and
everything else needed to make a real fiesta.
   We spotted Rodrigo and got in a quick gestalt.  He was doing the rounds
spreading good will and cheer.  He told us, "Alona wanted a big wedding.  I
think she's going to get more than she bargained for."
   Yeh.  There were already something like 1,500 bodies and more popping in
every few seconds.
   Bob started the ceremony.  He stood in front of the wedding altar,
_spread_ himself over the crowd and announced, "There's going to be a
bonding.  Please take your places."
   They did.  There was a big a cappella choir singing in ancient Spanish
about ancient gods, bonding of spirits and of love.  Sherry and I started
tearing up right away.
   Alona looked magnificent!  She radiated happiness all over everyone.
   The priest was dressed in ancient robes and feathers.  He wasn't
Catholic, that was for sure.  He spoke of consensual bonding among two or
more people and left the relationship open for growth and change.
   The choir gave us another song of love and life across the ages. 
Jaysus, it was beautiful.  I cried, Sherry cried and Bob and Mario got
misty-eyed.
   When Rodrigo and Alona went back down the aisle, the choir gave us a
final song -- it was one of Leone and Mark's!  Very nice.
   Bob had a final shot; he told everyone, "Thank you for coming.  Now, in
the ancient traditions -- an entire hour old -- let's celebrate!"
   We did exactly that.  Bob did a quick _look_ around and told all the
Ceanns, _"We've got 80 Clanns here!  Good on ya, folks!"_
   Bob and I tried to meet every Ceann in the flesh.  Fortunately, we'd all
gotten together in a relatively small area to do just that.  It was
fascinating to try speaking Japanese with an Irish accent creeping in!
   The Clann sizes ranged from four on up to hundreds.  Like us, some
didn't really know how many they had "under their wing." No sweat, we'll
catch up.
   We spotted Bridget in an extremely frilly white little-girl dress and
patent leather shoes.  George was right along side her in a small tuxedo.
They were the epitome of cute little girl and boy.  We had no idea how much
of their clothes were cleas; probably most of them.
   Yeh, most of us ladies exchanged ideas on clothes.  Since there were
several hundred mundanes scattered around, we were pretty careful not to
change too quickly.  Alona had changed into a nice dancing outfit which
almost "let it all hang out." Well, most of us took that as a hint so the
outfits got a lot more, em, breezy as the afternoon went on.
   I wouldn't say there were nekkid people exactly, but there was lots of
blood flow to body areas which normally didn't get it during a social
gathering.
   We spotted some alcohol blood filters in several of the mundanes;
someone was being pretty careful to keep things under control.
   We sampled some of the Irish whiskey.  Seems after it gets over ten
years old, it's a lot more mellow.  Anyway, we were pretty careful; our
bodies definitely weren't used to it.
   Seems weddings wound us all up a bit.  Good thing we had good sound
shields because Sherry and I demanded lots of unwinding for several hours
that night -- the Babies Within got a big growth assist.
   ------
   BOB (Sunday 8/6)
   George dropped by to give us a quick briefing on the Skunk Works.  His
big thing was the Celian networks.
   As soon as they'd fired up two of the personal systems, they'd gotten a
connection between them.  Wireless, all right, but it wasn't in the radio
spectrum like our current Earth technology.
   He told us, "From what we can see, it's down at least to the quantum
level." Why not?  We didn't know how extensive the Celian technology was in
different areas, so we were very open to anything.
   They'd traced some of the interaction and had found relay or booster
satellites in the Sun-Earth Lagrange points.  They were mostly
non-metallic, were solar-powered with accumulators and had small motors to
move them -- probably to avoid other "junk" which might accumulate.
   Being suspicious by now, they'd scanned a lot more of the solar system.
Yep, there were satellites around every planet, scattered around the
Asteroid Belt and were all the way out to and beyond the Oort Cloud.
   The ones beyond Mars had internal nuclear batteries rather than solar
panels; the Sun gets pretty dim that far out.  Being inventive (and having
experience with the vehicle at the Colorado outpost), they'd "refreshed"
the nuclear batteries.  We now apparently had a set of booster relays or
whatever throughout the entire system.
   After powering up several more systems from Selene City, they'd run some
tests.  From what they could tell, the signal propagation time from the
Moon to the outside of the Oort Cloud was essentially zero and ran at a
speed even beyond the Earth's best video delivery speed.  In other words,
freakin' fast!
   Mario, Carmel and others were gonna have a real good time figuring all
that out.  George thought that even beyond the physics of the network,
there would be a whole lot of learning about the networking software. 
Earth's technology had something like seven interface layers between the
system and the physical network; they were WAG'n the Cels would have
something similar in several layers.
   Those were just the "small" personal systems like our desktop systems.
They'd found what appeared to be several sizes down from there including
equivalents to our laptops (a couple sizes) down to a PDA size and even
smaller.  The small ones appeared to be extremely specialized, but so far
they didn't have many clues.
   George said, "The portable ones use accumulators.  We found what
appeared to be chargers, plugged them in and let them sit for a day.  Near
as we can tell, it worked, because we've brought several of them up, too."
   They'd formed a team of several hundred techies who were roaming around
Selene City checking out and bringing up the personal systems.  They'd only
found a couple so far that didn't come up along with a couple monitors,
keyboards and "mice" which were broken.  No sweat, there were several
thousand each in stock in Selene City warehouses.
   There were several *big* systems they were investigating.  There were
three in the living/admin area, a slightly smaller one in the hanger and
one really big one in the manufacturing area.  Speculation was it ran the
manufacturing machinery.
   They hadn't attempted to power up any of those yet.  A couple of the
team members had checked for dust and such and that had been it.  They
figured to get enough personal systems up first so we'd have a fighting
chance at learning the languages and get some system knowledge before they
tackled the large ones.  We may be iggorant but we ain't stupid.
   ------
   Brenda Quinn popped onto our doorstep right at 4:00.  None of us were in
the mood for a fancy dinner after yesterday, so we popped down to Rio de
Janeiro for something light.
   Portuguese wasn't a problem, obviously, and Brenda had been speaking
Spanish for years anyway.  Just for security, we all had disguise cleas and
spoke mainly Irish inside a garble shield.  Might as well get used to being
paranoid.
   Brenda told us, "I'm glad I've got all the RRK stuff dumped on you; I'd
been going bonkers since last September when Bob took up with Natalie. 
Nancy's treating you okay, right?"
   She was.  We brought Brenda up on the recent RRK happenings.
   Personally, she'd run into another lawyer in North Hollywood -- a
newbie. They were dating some, and both were on the lawyer consortium
beating away at the SW and the operations company set up.  She told us, "We
should be done with the final papers tomorrow.  If so, Evin will let us
know at Clann Meeting."
   She'd been married once right out of college to a non-Irishman.  "Dayum,
that was a pain after a while.  He'd learned enough Irish to order another
beer, ask for the way to the restroom and to tell me to get it on.  After
we were married, he wouldn't learn another word and kept hassling me about
my Irish connections.  Well, we parted ways after a year; last I heard, he
was an inventory clerk in a warehouse somewhere."
   No children, either.  She was interested in them (We spent several
minutes _looking_ over the Babies Within -- not much to look at, really.)
and thought this time around, things would work a lot better.  Their QQV
was excellent, and they made lovely rainbows together.
   With the influx of new Clann, she was really busy on standard lawyer
stuff.  Seems when someone goes free, they tend to get a lot more into
things like their own businesses.
   In the honoring room, she dayum near wore me to a pulp.  Even in her
40s, she was able to go three decent Journeys!  She was sweet and sassy at
the same time like a good Irishwoman should be!
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Monday 8/7)
   We let Brenda port off after breakfast.  She was a bit shaky in the
legs, but was a really happy lady.  I knew how she felt; Bob does that to
me, too.  She had very little interest in other women, so Sherry and I had
to make do with our own cuddles while Mario was out doing his magic with SW
and Celian computer stuff.
   Mario got back in time to go with Bob, Sherry and me to the oversight
visit to JRD Properties in Burbank.  The 130 staff were in good shape; we'd
already weeded out a couple people who'd been skimming.
   They handled both commercial and residential real estate, mostly
leasing. The commercial end was a lot more active, but they did have a few
good-sized residential properties, including ours in North Hollywood.
   They/we owned about two-thirds of the properties (most with the
appropriate sharing with our bank), and the others they simply managed --
for a fee, of course.
   Mario dove right into the computer systems while the rest of us
schmoozed a bit with the officers.  Cheryl, the Operations Officer, was one
of us already with another five of the staff being enhanced.  Good stuff.
   We got a good look at the property sheet and a briefing on how they
promoted, managed and maintained the properties.  They did heavy networking
with The Clean Place, Clean Pools, EverAlert, Fillmore Sales and the other
JRD companies.  If they hadn't, we would have suggested it.
   I told Cheryl, "Get in touch with our team at the main JRD office. 
They've been ferreting out lots of other properties for Evin and me; if
feasible, we should probably just get them all under your umbrella so we
have a single point of contact."
   Turned out she knew the team leader (in fact, he'd tagged her last
month) from their high school days.  From the look in her eyes, she wasn't
at all unwilling to, em, get "in touch" with him again.  Grin.
   They had a map with the properties marked, so we pulled ours up along
with it.  Fancy that; they had some right around ours.  Now we had a map of
everything we knew of for RRK, Evin and me, the JRD companies and JRD
Properties.  They also got the assignment to work with RRK to align their
efforts.
   Cheryl was familiar with the Clann goals and purposes for the safe
havens and the rest, so she knew exactly why we wanted the coordination. 
Besides, it would probably be more efficient for all of the companies.
   We did lunch; Mario managed to break away long enough to join us.  He
told us, "Definitely need an upgrade to the document imaging and retrieval
system.  It's getting overloaded." They stored images of all the deeds,
contracts and other stuff related to managing, buying and selling all the
property.  You can guess it's a decent stack of paperwork for each
transaction.
   Okay, I told them they'd probably get that as an assignment, so they
might as well start looking around now.  Perhaps coordinate with Mario for
compatibility with the JRD content management system?
   We passed out Sean seminar cards and told them, "Required attendance. 
There's one this weekend in Seattle, so you might as well plan on doing
that one.  Cheryl, you and Mike might plan on getting together to do some,
em, coordination."
   Mike was the temp team leader for Evin and me.  I'd already _contacted_
him about Cheryl, and he was *very* interested in getting with her.  I
figured they'd end up quite well-coordinated by the time the weekend was
done.  And yes, she was very much aware of the Gold birth control method.
Hehehehe.
   Okay, we were done there.  We let everyone go back to work and popped
back home.  Our F&Rs were pretty simple and only took fifteen minutes. 
Mario and Sherry took off, Bob went out for some Ceann Mor activities, and
I popped over to JRD to talk with Mike.
   Good on 'em!  The inbox stack was down to three inches from the three
feet it had been before.  Mike told me, "Thanks for locating Cheryl.  We
were quite attracted to each other back in high school but were too dim to
do anything about it."
   Yeh.  They were a couple bright bulbs now, though.
   Anyway, the team had finished up inventorying the storage spaces.  In
fact, they'd found half a dozen more scattered around.  Mainly, they had
collectibles of one form or another.
   Mike told me, "With all the different accounts we've found in the safe
deposit boxes, you and Evin have around 50 million.  Your ownership is
clear but would be extremely difficult to trace unless someone knew exactly
where to look.  Being just a paralegal, I'm sure Evin and you will report
all this to the IRS, right?"
   Right.  Evin and I would have to talk about that.
   In most cases, the collectibles ownership was pretty clear with titles,
bills of sale and all that.  Others didn't really matter a whole lot; there
wasn't much interest in "clear title" to a four-caret diamond.
   So, baring any unpleasant surprises in the last couple inches of paper,
Evin and I had well over 100 million in collectibles to go along with the
accounts.  The team had tracked down pretty much everything in J&R's
parents' wills and were in progress on getting clear title on that stuff,
too.
   So, that adventure was almost over.  I didn't think Evin would mind a
bit of extra pocket change; I knew I wouldn't.
   When the temp team finished, they all had firm offers (via Van Nuys
Temps) for work in SW, the upcoming operations company or a coordination
team among JRD, RRK and others.  Might as well have an experienced team for
that.
   ------
   BOB
   At Clann Meeting, there was a lot of stuff to go over.  Nothing
earth-shaking, necessarily, but very interesting.
   Maggie and the Skunk Works had released technical bulletins on Two-Way
Touches, Distance Viewing, Sound and Perception Transducers (both
directions) and yet another one on holograms and cleas.  Sherry immediately
snuck off and signed out some for us.
   Maggie also briefed us on the hunt for ancestors' spirits.  Basically,
it was not at all promising.  They'd been able to find 1 in 500 searches;
it was a really intensive, deep-level probe just to check.  With the spirit
not having any real reason (usually) or awareness of the bodies' genetic
line, they could end up anywhere.
   Sean was an exception.  For whatever reason, he and several of his Clann
had bopped down the same genetic line.  Perhaps something to investigate in
our copious free time.  Right.
   Kat told us about the hunt for take-over bodies.  Mario and company had
set up a database of around 25,000 bodies around the world suitable for
"use" similar to how hers had been.  Guess that will go into the global
search system, too.  Made lots of sense to me.
   I got a turn.  "At a rough guesstimate, we've got over 2,500 ones of us
now, and Maggie McLennan figures we'll probably be doubling that every
couple weeks or so.
   "Security is the watchword here.  Know your Potentials; just because
someone has Talent or Potential doesn't automatically give them a right to
be one of us.
   "We haven't run across any evil spirits yet, but most of us are betting
it's simply a matter of time.  We really haven't done much investigation of
governments like State and U.S.  Congressmen, Senators and the like."
   That got a good laugh, but it was a truism of sorts.  We hadn't really
found anything to indicate someone with Potential was intrinsically good or
ethical, only our experience.
   I finished up my part, "We haven't had the slightest security breach
yet. That's probably because the enhancement teams are training new spirits
properly and the checksheets work.  Keep expanding and keep up the good
work."
   Ben Talbert told us about "progress" on the Mojave sinkhole and got the
security team and engineers a good attaboy for their excellent work.  Yeh.
We're learning.
   He gave us some additional information over what George had told us.  He
announced Selene City was open for BYOB.  George and his team had brought
up about a thousand "personal" systems which were available for training.
Silvia Connor, our lead linguist (lots of ladies were hoping she was a
cunning linguist), had produced a short checksheet to get someone started
on the tutorials.  Sign up sheets were posted by each of the systems.
   There were thousands of other computers, too, ranging from tiny ones
(SWAG'd to be special-purpose), PDA-sized, laptops on up to a really big
one in the manufacturing area.  If SW thought it was really big, it was
probably something!
   They'd only had a couple casualties so far in bringing up systems.  Two
of the desktop systems hadn't come up and a couple others had bad monitors
or other peripherals.  They weren't concerned; apparently the Cels loved
spare parts because there were several thousand each in storage.
   The computer engineers had found the Cel systems had a form of wireless
networking and it sure wasn't based on radio.  There were relay satellites
in the Earth-Sun Lagrange points plus hundreds more scattered throughout
the rest of the solar system.
   The term, "faster than greased lightning" didn't even start to apply. 
From what they'd found so far, the signal propagation speed between Earth
and the Oort cloud was essentially zero.  The data transmission speed was
pretty fast, too; they mentioned gigabytes and terabytes per second.  Not
too shabby.  It might make a workable secure Clann system.  Grin.
   All right!  Evin told us the companies were set up.  The R&D company was
"SW Enterprises" while the operational/manufacturing/etc.  one was
"NewTek." Made sense to me.
   He told us the actual ownership setup for each ran through at least
fifty different companies, holding companies, blind trusts and the like. 
The banks were all offshore and scattered around the world.
   Both SW Enterprises and NewTek were finally registered in the Bahamas
somewhere on a small island "nation" of some 10,000 people.  Their main
industry was hosting companies and Internet sites.  Taxes?  Maybe a tenth
of a percent of the net.
   Both SW Enterprises and NewTek (way back up the line to the originating
company) had 10,000 private shares to sell at $100 each.  Limit was one per
spirit, and they were open only to ones of us.  Checks, cash, credit cards,
debit cards or money orders accepted starting tomorrow at SW in the JRD
building.
   To wind down after the meeting, Kat and I snuggled and snogged for a
couple hours.  Our Babies Within were doing well enough they didn't need an
additional assist from me.  Right then only; it might change in a couple
minutes.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Tuesday 8/8)
   We weren't exactly first in line to get our shares, but almost.  We dug
real deep into our pockets for the $100 each.  Painful, but would be worth
it in the long run.  Grin.
   After our morning exercises, the Golds, Bob and I snuck off for a round
of golf.  Getting somewhere was never an issue, just getting the
reservation.  Not really a problem there, either; Sarah and Julio seemed to
know every person in every pro shop at every golf course in the U.S.  (and
maybe the world) by their first name.
   An hour at the driving range beforehand honed in a few things.  The
Golds were doing the Krav Maga exercises, too, and we all were noticing our
body coordination and control were getting a lot better.
   Just for fun, we switched bodies and genders with the Golds.  Oscar felt
pretty dayum good from the inside.  Jaysus, male bodies sure seem to have
urges; that Kathleen's tidy arse (actually every body part) caused some
blood flow rerouting.
   Bob must have been sneaking in some study somewhere.  Near as I could
tell, his course management had improved significantly, and even using
Karen's body, he squeaked out a decent 80.  I'd better concentrate on the
golf ball rather than the butts and boobs or he'd outdo me!
   After the round, we zipped our clubs back home, got back our own bodies
and took a trip to Selene City.  Lunar gravity *is* interesting.
   Oscar remarked, "We use _touches_ in our Custom Cloud Cushions, and it
feels a bit like this.  How about doing the same here except increasing the
attraction instead of decreasing it?"
   Ho, boy!  Worked like a charm.  We then had decent traction on the floor
and didn't bounce around at all.  After five seconds or so, we got
accustomed to it.  The engineers had been making noises about artificial
gravity here, but in the interim, this would do.
   Bob and I took a look at Central Park (our name for it).  It was bare as
a newborn baby's butt, but was sculpted with different terrain.
   One of the entrances to the park had a good-sized hall or building just
inside.  It looked like a recreation center of some sort with tables,
chairs, rooms, kitchens and the like.
   Bob and I stood outside and looked over Central Park.  I think we both
had the same thought at once -- this was a perfect location for a golf
course club house!
   We took a preliminary run at a layout.  The clubhouse could be the start
of the front and back nine holes, and both would end up here.  There were
small and large hills, what looked like stream channels and all sorts of
neat oddities.  Well, guess we'll have to put out a call for a golf course
architect and put in our claim before someone else got ideas.
   There were extra lighting panels overhead (which was some 500 meters
high over the entire park) which led us to believe the Cels had grown
vegetation and the like.  It would be an interesting cycle to bring it back
up again from a pretty-much sterile soil condition.
   The Golds joined us after their own adventures and agreed with our
assessment.  Hmm.  Would a golf course here count as a safe haven?  In
fact, we might compare the work to make Selene City habitable against
finding and constructing safe havens on Earth?
   RHIP so we had a quick _chat_ with Ben.  He told us, _"You management
types do come up with ideas sometimes.  Actually, we've got five different
teams working on the feasibility of bringing up Selene City to an
operational status._
   _"As for using it as the major safe haven, I'd leave that up to the
Clanns Council.  The last estimate I'm aware of is a couple months to have
the place operational; a lot depends on how fast and well we learn how to
use the large systems there.  One of the mid-sized systems seems to be set
up to control the facilities._
   _"Still, it won't hurt to run it by them.  My initial SWAG says it'll
probably be faster and less expensive than having individual Clanns doing
their own on Earth.  In addition, there'd be a lot more security concerns
here on Earth than there."_
   He did laugh (quietly) about the idea of building a golf course.  _"Why
not?  I beat a ball myself every once in a while.  That'd be up to the
Selene City Council to decide.  By the way, are we gonna have a Mayor and
all that?"_
   Yeh.  All sorts of neat stuff to think about.  Fortunately, Bob didn't
have to decide that, just ensure all the activities were aligned.  Ben told
us he'd toss all the ideas into the appropriate pot to simmer for a while.
   ------
   BOB
   Hmm.  A golf course with variable gravity spots as additional hazards?
Sure would take a lot of testing; maybe they'd need some volunteers.  Grin.
   We zipped back home where we spent an hour or so ensuring we didn't have
too many loose ends which weren't being handled.  Fortunately, everything
we had on our lists belonged to a team somewhere which was taking
responsibility for handling it.
   Ted Rhine and Rita Gold popped onto our doorstep in the afternoon.  Very
nice!  Kat and Rita had an intense discussion on what to wear for dinner in
Callao (on the coast west of Lima in Peru).  Ted and I thought we hid our
eye-rolling pretty well.
   They decided for us, too.  It would be our word against thousands of
theirs, so we agreed.
   Each of us had a complete cleas which included different hair color and
length, different complexions, eyes, noses, body height (that was
interesting to carry off), voices and everything else we could think of. 
The Skunk Works technical bulletin on disguises had a lot of interesting
ideas.
   The body shield gave us a good shot at not leaving any fingerprints (no
sweat there, either, because they were modified, too) or DNA.  Now that was
a challenge; just breathing out let moisture escape which would have DNA
from our bodies.
   Well, that was all part of the fun!  We tweaked, fiddled, put in
transducers and feedback circuits and followed a lot of tips in the recent
technical bulletins.  *We* were satisfied at least.  Once things were set
up, they didn't really interfere with our taste or other perceptions.
   Okay, enough of the serious stuff.  We zipped down and strolled around
for fifteen minutes until our table was ready.
   We seemed to fit right in with the rest of the tourists.  The girls had
taken pains not to be too outstanding; kinda hard to do for them, even with
full cleas.  Ted remarked on that and got a nice purr and promises of a
Real Good Time that night.
   A garble-shield held the voice security in okay so we just yakked away.
   Ted and Rita were fully hatted on being Brain Trust tutors.  They and
several others like PVC had been checking out the new Freshmen and any
known student transfers in for more members.  Dayum, the Mickey C Brain
Trust was up to 250 at last count.  Not bad at all.
   They were working with Mona Nolan and Ted Maloney from Clann Cullen on
long-distance teleportation.  Rita told us, "Maggie wanted both 'naturals'
and 'enhanced' to do the testing.  We haven't actually done much porting
yet.  The main thrust so far has been looking at the math and physics and
really turning it inside out."
   Ted said, "Yeh.  Some of the Eastern philosophies talk about 'the map is
the territory.' It really looks as if we're zeroing in on that as a
practical application.  We're getting into what appears to be some
fundamental agreements and construction of the physical universe and how it
meshes with our individual spirit universes."
   So far, there hadn't been much difference among the four of them in
their abilities.  They were all getting really good at _looking_ at the map
and relating it to the territory.  Time will tell; the project had a
relatively high priority since we were looking at off-planet, extra-solar
colonies.
   Since they were working on the teleportation project, they weren't part
of an enhancement team.  Rita told us, "Doesn't really matter, either.  If
a newbie fits the profile for the Brain Trust, the enhancement team tips us
off anyway."
   Dinner was excellent with lots of nice flavor and texture.  The body
shield and cleas didn't seem to stop our enjoyment at all.  And the
restaurant had no issues with accepting U.S.  $20 bills, either.
   After we zipped our bodies back to our place, we popped right back and
did a DNA trace over the entire restaurant, block and city.  Not too bad;
we each had left a couple hundred thousand molecules from airborne
moisture. Since it wasn't concentrated, it would dissipate really fast.
   Just to be sure, we ran a quick filter over the city.  Three seconds and
it was a done deal.  Now, the only trace left behind was some generic $20
bills and some memories of gringo tourists who hadn't the faintest
resemblance to our actual bodies.  Seemed good to us.
   In the honoring room, Rita was totally sweet and lovable.  Yummy
everywhere, she gave me no quarter during two very nice Journeys.
   We spent a bit of time in the Asteroid Belt checking out facilities. 
There were something like a thousand tagged so far, and a couple had been
powered up and were warming up.
   I think the Clann Reynolds women gossiped a lot; Rita knew exactly how
to hit my poke spot!
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Wednesday 8/9)
   Yeh, Ted had a Real Good Time all right.  He was considerate, sweet and
nicely aggressive when he should be.  Rita had a real good man there!
   We did a Los Vegas Rio buffet breakfast.  Our cleas went on in five
seconds and we ate the place clean.  Well, that might be an exaggeration,
but we did justice to it.  We still put out moisture DNA traces, but this
time we put the filter in the garble shield and ensured it was all filtered
out before we left.
   We had an oversight visit to JRD Builder Supplies in North Hollywood. 
With 200 staff, it provided pretty much what you'd expect -- builder
supplies.  It wasn't Home Depot but specialized in the professional
contractor hard-to-find or hard-to-make items Home Depot and the like
didn't carry.  No lumber or garden supplies; in fact, there were very few
"consumer" goods.
   The big thing here was inventory tracking.  As with any direct sales
organization, we had to balance customer service (who'd love to have 100%
of anything any customer could ever want in any quantity) against the
investment in inventory cost and its carrying cost of 20 to 30% a year. 
That mean the computer and inventory processes had to be pretty dayum good.
   We took Mario and Sherry along with David and Elizabeth.  Mario
immediately dove into the IT area while the rest of us went around the
store.
   Yeh, three of the executives were ones of us, which helped a lot right
off the bat.  We'd had no big issues come up during the audit or probe run,
so it was in pretty good shape there.  We showed the report summary to the
CEO and COO (a couple illegals and a touch of "fringe benefits") who put
them on their immediate-handling list.
   What we looked for in the store tour was arrangement, traffic flow,
organization and cleanliness.  David, Bob and Elizabeth had *lots* of
shopping experience in this kind of place, so they really did a number on
things.
   They/we ended up with about a hundred issues ranging from tiny nit-picks
(a sign was crooked and a bit hard to read) to more major ones like having
the paint and coatings split up into two sections divided by some plumbing.
Some of the shopping carts and trolleys needed some repair, too.  Don't you
hate those carts with a wheel that vibrates, clunks or squeaks?
   We took the execs to lunch at the local Greek restaurant and talked shop
all the way through.  There was still plenty of time to register, so we
passed out Sean seminar cards and discussed getting in the policies they
were going to learn about.
   Mario said, "The ERP system looks like it can handle everything we need.
I'm going to recommend getting some APICS people in here to ensure the
basics are in and to 'lean up' things.  I wouldn't doubt there's 10 to 20%
of the inventory we could do without.  That's a cool million or so we could
be using somewhere else plus the carrying costs."
   We'd have an extensive F&R, but none of it was vital since we'd gone
over everything with them already.
   When we got back home, we discovered someone had snuck in and installed
a Celian computer system!  There was a single central box powered from an
accumulator and six monitors and associated peripherals.  There was even a
printer with Earth paper and duro-plast sheets.
   Yeh, it had been George and his crew.  They'd left a note saying, "Some
management pukes have been bitching and moaning about how degrading it
would be to have to do training with the common crowd.  Maybe you'll feel
better with this."
   The Cel desktop operating system was inherently multi-user; it could
easily go well over 20 simultaneous users.  We each had a User ID and
password and a checksheet to get us up into the tutorials.  Totally cool!
   Of course we just left it be.  Right.  Mario (the rat) already had
access to a system at the SW office, so he let Sherry, Bob and me have at
it.
   The user interface was already set up to do the baby hand holding we
needed.  That, along with the checksheet, had us all into the first
language tutorial in about 20 minutes.
   Once I'd practiced and learned what the various pictures, icons and the
like meant and did, the interface wasn't an issue.  I already had a
"shortcut" which dropped me right into the tutorial list.
   All right!  We spent the next two hours merrily learning the alphabet
(Cases equivalent to upper and lower and another one for another sort of
emphasis), punctuation (statement ends in Sperk and emotional indicators in
Phane) and numbers (yeh, at least it was base 10).
   Of course the checksheet had us drill the alphabet and numbers forward
and backwards as well as describe all the punctuation.  Was it easy?  Nope.
The symbols were the same between the languages but they used different
typefaces (by tradition) to indicate immediately which language it was. 
Apparently it was a real faux pas to mix the two together too much.  Great
start!
   We left plenty of time to get ready for the Sean and harem visit; we'd
managed to conjure up a Soo Laid for the three of us finishing the detail
manuals.  Oh, well.  We'd just have to grit our teeth and bear it!  Grin.
   We popped over right on the dot.  We'd worked up cleas for what we
remembered of semi-formal ancient Irish dress; we'd consulted a bit
beforehand with the Cullen social secretaries.
   Their place was fixed up like a Clann meeting hall with stone, (fake)
furs all over, fireplaces and a ferocious green cat who tried to polish all
the skin off our ankles.  The serving wenches looked so good we immediately
considered serving them for dinner!
   I think Sean and Bob were the only ones to behave themselves in the
least.  We wimmin just ogled each other and the guys and let everything
drool.
   We had a fun dinner with "authentic" roasts, mead, soda bread and the
like.  They'd disguised the cutlery to look ancient, but it worked
excellently.
   The Geeser was well behaved; she didn't beg at all but ensured our
ankles were free from cold and ferocious beasts.
   Yeh, we let out some *great* belches to compliment the cooks.  The farts
from the mead would come later!
   We chatted a bit after dinner; just a touch of shop talk about the
Clanns and a catch-up on how we were doing with the JRD companies.
   Bob got a good look at Sean's new ceremonial staff.  He twirled it
around a few times (I could see an ancient kata in there somewhere) and
said it would be an excellent weapon.  He overstepped things a little,
though, when he said, "Maybe I'd better get me one of these.  I've got a
couple females who need some beatings."
   Yeh.  Sherry and I immediately tried to make dents in his shoulders with
our fists.  Right.  I informed him haughtily, "We're cutting you off.  You
ain't gonna get nothing from either of us for a whole...  night.  Suffer."
   He did -- for about three minutes.  The serving wenches descended on him
and bore him away moaning to make him suffer more.
   When Sean, Sherry and I calmed down a little from laughing, Sean
politely asked, "May I show you ravishing young ladies to the Den of
Iniquity?"
   And a den it was.  Soft furs everywhere with plenty of flickering
firelight and a really comfy fur-lined Custom Cloud Cushion.
   Oh, yeh!  He was wonderful!  Hard muscle all over, a platinum tongue
(for all uses) and a Shillelagh that didn't know how to quit.  We tried our
best, but knew we wouldn't outlast him.
   Sean and I ganged up on Sherry and tied her down pretty good with some
of the furs.  Sean coached me on making a woman squirt -- fingers working
the G-spot really hard and don't let up!  Between us, we got nice tasty
streams from Sherry for a solid 45 minutes; I lost count at 20 in a row! 
She finally passed out and we had to clean her up with our tongues without
her cooperation.  Wus!
   We popped out and about and _peeked_ at Bob and company.  He was holding
his own; he'd already screwed Eileen and BB into oblivion and was working
on Kate.  Maggie wasn't physically ready for that kind of screwing yet, but
she still got very thoroughly ravished.
   We popped up to Selene City.  We told Sean about Oscar's discovery for a
full-gravity touch; he was quite appreciative.
   Interesting.  A couple teams were warming up the observation posts on
the Earth and back sides.  Looks like we'll have some more touring to do in
a while.
   Sean's poke spot worked just the same as Bob's.  We spent another hour
gently loving each other until the Hat Ladies popped in and kidnapped
Sherry and me!
   Oh, my, they were tasty!  They learned fast, too.  We got some healthy
squirts out of them all, including Maggie.  BB was a streamer like Sherry
while Eileen, Kate and Maggie were more like gushers.  They all tasted
wonderful -- a bit like the mead we'd had earlier!
   Jayus and Janey Mack!  Seems if I got my clit up really hard, Marge
could slip it right in!  That was a *really* wild experience!  She thought
so, too, because the others had to pry us apart after 45 minutes.
   I got the idea after a while that we'd *all* gotten Soo Laid.  We're
definitely gonna have to get a return engagement.  Maybe with the N&Bs,
too? Hehehehe.
   ------
   BOB (Thursday 8/10)
   Moan.  Groan.  I suffered all night.  Even the Geeser came in once,
draped herself over me and tried to vibrate me to death.  The Cullen ladies
were totally wonderful!  We had rich, vibrant glows in our _mergings_ and
created some great rainbows around Jupiter.
   8:00 in NYC for breakfast at Gilligan's!  Four serving wenches, two
Ladies and two Lairds of the Manor staggered in with mammoth (faked)
hangovers.  We loudly bemoaned our actions at the orgy last night and
sucked down some coffee and tea to calm the pounding.
Yeh, most of the male patrons would have endured a month of hangovers
for a night with these ladies!  Little did they knew how evil they were!
   Maggie did behave herself and "remembered" not to fly around the room
this time.  No actual wardrobe malfunctions, either, though there were lots
of close calls.
   Sean passed his ceremonial staff around to the other patrons for a
look-see (suitably cleased in deep red and other tricks), then gave a quick
demo of Shillelagh swinging.  Not the one between his legs, either.
   I know the social secretaries plotted against Sean and me.  Lecherous
glances, giggles and tittie hard-ons gave us a couple hints.  We were in
some serious trouble!  Hehehehe.
   Great food and fun company.  We miraculously recovered in time to pop
back home and get ready for our next oversight visit.
   We took Mother, Father, Ramon, Elisa, Mario, Sherry and the Medinas with
us to JRD Construction Equipment.  The 125 staff sold and serviced new and
used construction equipment ranging from jack hammers up to medium-sized
dozers and dump trucks.
   Last night's probe hadn't found anything worth mentioning, and the book
audit wasn't scheduled for another week, so we mainly went into the
business processes.
   As expected, there were a couple ones of us high up on the Org Board. 
The Medinas went off with the lead servicemen to get acquainted with the
processes they used in scheduling and delivering equipment service.
   There was a good-sized yard with both the new and used equipment grouped
by function.  The place was a bit dusty; that got an immediate blip on the
To Do List -- put gravel on it or something.
   The salesmen knew their stuff both on selling and on the equipment
itself.  Knowing the relative merits of the various makes, they were able
to match up a prospective customer's needs and wants with something that
fit -- or advise them where else to look.
   Ramon and Elisa drooled a bit over the equipment.  They were doing dayum
well in El Tule and vicinity but were always looking to expand.  They'd
already paid back most of Kat's initial loan and were learning how to
expand without breaking themselves.
   Good.  We did lunch with the executives (the Medinas went off with the
mechanics to drink them under the table) and passed out the seminar cards.
Two of the execs could make that weekend with no sweat; the other two had
business meetings with customers.  No problem; they'd get to study The Book
in the meantime.
   ------
   Father and Mother had some slack time (finally) so we bopped over for a
visit.  They were doing great!
   Reynolds Construction was finishing up the remnants of repairs from the
January earthquake.  They still expected stuff to come trickling in over
the next year or so.  As expected.
   The Medinas had fit in just fine.  They had my old room and had
decorated it to their taste.  Nothing outlandish even by Mother's
standards.
   Fortunately, sound shields worked real well, so none of the household
got disturbed by goings-on in the night.  Mary and Sam shared the bathroom
with them with no problems; we didn't even ask if they shared anything
else.
   Reynolds Construction had sponsored them for several mechanics' schools,
starting with general engine work.  They expected to go all the way up
through a couple heavy equipment courses by the time they were done.
   Kat and Guerrero Construction were footing the bills, but they did their
part in the household.  Since the courses were self-paced, they could go as
fast as they could.
   After they'd gotten a reasonable grasp on Burbank English and had gone
through the study checksheet, they were cruising right along at about twice
the pace of the "normal" students.  Seems understanding what one is doing
really helps.  Grin.
   Of course, they had volunteers from the rest of the Clann "helping" them
out on the Burbank-style U.S.  culture.  They were in their early twenties,
so they fit in with pretty much everyone.
   They were keeping right up with all the technological advances, too. 
After the initial runway of basic math and physics, they didn't have a lick
of trouble with teleportation and technical bulletins.
   Father and Mother usually chatted at least once a week with Nana and
Seanathair in Akron; often they just popped back and forth for an evening
of quality control checking on the latest acquisitions of Irish whiskey. 
Mother remarked, "Mick is in *really* good shape now; the best he's been in
50 years." Knowing them, they'd done in-depth inspections of their
"conditions." Hehehehe.
   With the work load from Reynolds Construction easing off, they were
working with a couple of the Skunk Work teams investigating Selene City and
the other facilities.  Good, the teams were firing up some facilities in
the Asteroid Belt and around Jupiter.  We should have some interesting
results in a couple months.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   We had a lovely visit with Sean and harem.  One thing we did set up was
a Clann-wide pool party for next Sunday.  Weddings were a blast, but the
casual stuff was great fun.  After a quick _talk_ with the Clann Cullen
social secretaries, they decided to share in the fun, too.
   After we zipped back home, we found Mario had just finished up the last
detail manual.  Yes!  We immediately informed Maggie -- we figured throwing
him into the lion's den all by himself was a worthy reward.
   Oh, yeh.  Maggie immediately scheduled a "reward ceremony" for him after
the pool party on Sunday.  Hope he gets enough rest by then.  Hehehehe.
   Right at midnight, the Clanns Council met to do an Admin Scale Workshop.
We limited physical attendance to just one per Clann (the rest could _link_
in, obviously), but even then we had to use the big JRD conference room. 
Dayum, we'd gotten an additional 15 Clans since last Saturday so we had
over a hundred bodies in the shop!
   Sean ran the workshop; the rest of the Hat Ladies circulated around and
helped out.  He passed out very nice workbooks (never hurts to put your
logo and name out to the public) and went to town.
   One of the first things we covered was the scope.  We unanimously agreed
we were working on the Admin Scale for the entire group of the ones of us
and the Clanns Council was the representatives of the group.
   Shit, that broke loose a lot of concepts and ideas.  We weren't talking
any more about just a few spirits, but basically all the current and future
free spirits in the world -- and possibly others we might meet outside of
what we knew.
   The high-end goals, then, had to cover lots of possibilities.  After
lots of discussion, we managed to get them down to about five main ones;
the rest we could push down to Purposes since they were actually subsets of
a major goal.
   We did a quick run up and down the Scale to get some possible basics in
place.  For the "low" end of a Valuable Final Product (exchangeable outside
the group), what would the rest of mankind exchange with us?  All grist for
the mill.
   It took two solid hours to get something hammered out, but we ended up
with everyone happy.  Sean told us, "Good.  Now, just from what we've done
tonight, there's tons of stuff, capabilities and the like we still know
little or nothing about.  I'd recommend the Council review this Scale at
least every six months for a while.  Betcha some things will change."
   Yeh.  He also recommended each Clann do its own Admin Scale to ensure
their operations were in alignment.  Kieran Flannigan (yummy red bear from
Akron!) immediately asked, "Could we get some help if necessary?  I'm sure
a weekend would be enough." The way he looked at the Hat Ladies told the
rest of us what kind of "help" he was interested in.
   BB told him promptly, "Ask nicely and things might happen.  All depends
on the schedule." The other Hat Ladies didn't mind looking him over,
either. Hehehehe.
   All righty, then.  Bob said he'd have the final Scale printed up and
issued as a confidential paper to be ready tomorrow evening.  Dayum, we
needed a global system up like yesterday!  Just an announcement board or
blog would help spread word a lot easier.
   ------
   (Friday 8/11)
   This time we didn't sneak off for golf.  Don, Ana, Bob and I just took
off for the Phoenician Golf Club in Scottsdale (Arizona); the social
secretaries had gotten us a first-up tee time.
   We spent a half-hour at the driving range doing our warm-ups then teed
off.  I rode the first nine with Ana while Bob and Don did guy-talk.
   Ana had a very nicely rounded belly.  All our Babies Within were doing
so nicely!  She told me, "Yeh, I think getting lots of baby-grow juice is
helping a lot.  They're doing *really* good!" Yes, that was the reason for
both of us, right?
   Being preggy didn't affect either of us at all except to make us
hornier. Give it several more months, and maybe.
   We gossiped, chatted, waved our butts, boobs and bellies at the guys and
had a great time.  Bob and Don must have been off their feed a bit, because
Ana and I trounced them by four strokes!  Of course, our threats of long
dry spells for them couldn't have had anything to do with it, right?
   After a leisurely lunch (with a couple *really* preggy bellies), we
popped back home and relaxed for a while.
   That was physical relaxation only.  We got on the Cel system, did a
couple alphabet drills and got right into the next Sperk tutorial.
   Right to left took a bit of getting used to, but was doable.  We had
sound right along with it, a pleasant (male?) voice accompanied the
graphics, symbols, words and animations.  The "reality" behind it was
Selene City (or whatever their name for it was) since it demonstrated words
and concepts using scenes from it.
   The Cel males and females were physically different just like us Humans.
Males were a touch larger, females were generally a bit more slender and
had permanent breasts like Humans -- at least the mature ones did.
   "Boys" and "girls" were the same as us in many respects.  From a couple
hints dropped from the Skunk Works, the Cels matured sexually (started
puberty) around 15 years and the average lifespan was a couple hundred
years.  All Earth years.
   The language structure was simple, at least to start.  "And," "or," "if"
and the like were very plain constructs with little to no chance of
ambiguity or mis-grouping.  Good stuff!
   Sarah Stapley and Julio Ortiz appeared on our doorstep right at 4:00. 
After a nice round of hugs and kisses, we gave them the twenty-five cent
tour.  Yeh, they recognized the Cel system immediately.  Julio said, "We're
into the first Sperk tutorial, too.  We say the words along with the voice;
it's not too bad."
   We relaxed in the Jacuzzi for a while.  Sarah *really* liked the water
jets!  She eyed Julio and told him, "We've gotta get something like this.
Maybe after Selene City gets operational, we could get our own private
Pleasure Palace!"
   That was an idea.  With Selene City having something like 500,000
apartments (our term), there'd be room for a while.
   Sarah looked a lot like Sherry -- wonder how that happened?  She was her
own girl, though.  She and Julio were definitely items and were making the
best plans they could together.
   Both would be Juniors next year at their respective schools.  They were
an enhancement team with 100 notches on their stick.  Good on 'em!
   As the social secretaries' secretaries, they deserved the best.  Our
dinner target tonight was Abilene, TX, so Sarah and I did a bit of
_peeking_ to see what would fit in.
   Yep, Dress Redneck Cowboy would do just fine.  Julio and Bob got their
instructions while Sarah and I played around with our cleas until we were
satisfied.
   We all went blonde; Sarah and I had really long hair, plenty of
cleavage, nipple-bumps, boots and skirts.  We thought we looked fine; the
guys seemed to think so too since we got nice salutes from the appropriate
male members.
   Abilene had a couple high-end restaurants, so Sarah had picked the best.
No vested interest, mind you.  Grin.
   Oh, yes, we got looks all right.  About three seconds got us all into
the local Abilene drawl ("Ya'all look reel gud...") so we fit in without a
ripple.  The garble-shield filtered out most everything anyway, but we
stuck to Abilene-English.  No reason to leave a memory of Irish cowboys!
   Filet mignon wasn't particularly cheap but was worth every cent.  Toss
in the fixin's and Mud Pie for dessert, and we thought we might survive for
a few hours.
   We talked, laughed, gossiped about pretty much everything and everyone
and had a great time.  A half-hour's stroll along the downtown sidewalks
(yes, there were sidewalks and pavement on the roads) let dinner settle
enough to be comfortable.
   Oh, my!  Julio must have gotten some coaching from Mario!  He was
loving, sweet and very good!  We ate each other up!
   Sarah got a magnum Soo Laid for being such a good secretaries'
secretary. She turned out to be a stream-squirter like her sister -- maybe
it ran in the family?
   Chapter 15
   BOB (Saturday 8/12)
   Sarah knew about the poke spot, too.  Dayum, gotta get it calloused up a
little.  Since it was a Saturday morning, we took our time over breakfast
in Cancun; neither Sarah nor Julio had any problem with the local Spanish.
   Sherry and Mario had taken off fairly early for some skunking around, so
Kat and I had to make do by ourselves.  Too bad.
   Since this was the Sean seminar day in Seattle, we settled back and
_peeked_ in every once in a while.  From what we picked up, they'd
originally planned for about 2,000 people, but by the time things had
settled down, there were over 2,600.  There was enough room in the hall for
everyone, so there wasn't any issue there.
   Dayum, Sean and the Hat Ladies were smooth!  The ladies looked totally
yummy as Irish cheerleaders -- part cheerleader and part Catholic
school-girl.
   They'd gotten their cleas changes down to an art.  Less than five
seconds after being a cheerleader jumping in the air, any of them could
walk out perfectly attired as a serious businesswoman.  Sean didn't join in
as a cheerleader; guess he was putting out a different image.
   In the audience, we spotted pretty much everyone we'd "assigned" to be
there.  We made a list so we could send them a follow-up email.
   Now that they'd been to the seminar, they already knew they needed to
study The Book in detail along with the detail manuals.  Hmm.  Let's make a
quick talk sometime with Sean and harem about how to make that as smooth as
possible.
   ------
   (Sunday 8/13)
   All right!  Multiple-pool pool party!  Between Clanns Cullens and
Reynolds, we had well over a thousand people invited.  Being Southern
California, there were a lot of members in both Clanns who had pools and/or
Jacuzzis, so we had a joint venture with something like 75 locations.  If
one spot got a bit crowded, they could zip over to another one.
   Sean and I had sponsored all the food and other goodies, so that was a
non-issue.  Someone had put in the time to purchase it all and do the
distribution.  Did I sense some Soo Laids in the future?
   With a cleas and sound shield around each hosting site, there weren't
any issues with disturbing the neighbors.  That was a Real Good Thing,
especially since the accepted uniform seemed to be a birthday suit.
   Kat and I did the rounds -- in the accepted uniform.  Each site had its
own little specialty like rare roast beef, carne assada or the like.  Of
course, we had to sample it all; I had my manners to maintain and Kat was
eating for four.  Grin.
   Sean and harem at Olive Tree Lane specialized in Irish whiskey and a
gorgeous nekkid faery who fluttered around impartially molesting any
visitor who appeared.  Maggie was great!
   Yeh, we sampled some of the whiskey.  Dayum, some of it was really
smooth.  Better not get too attached to it; after all, we were under-aged
and weren't responsible for ourselves, right?
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Fun pool party.  We saw lots of different pools and Jacuzzis (we let
Sherry and Mario host ours while we were out and about) and shoved in lots
of food.  Sean's Irish whiskey sampling was very interesting.  It kinda
grows on ya!
   Bob and I were back home by 6:30 to help Mario and Sherry wrap up. 
There wasn't much mess, so there wasn't much to do.
   Just before 7:00, Sherry and I latched onto Mario and zipped us over to
Olive Tree Lane; he had a reward coming!  We turned our prisoner over to
the tender mercies of the Cullen Ladies and left him to his fate. 
Hehehehe.
   Since Mario was gonna be having so much fun, Bob and I grabbed Sherry,
and we had a perfectly delightful evening ourselves.  The Babies Within got
a couple good doses, and Sherry practiced.  Grin.
   ------
   (Monday 8/14)
   We went to Calabasas right at 9:00.  JRD Homes was a new-homes builder
with 175 full-time staff.  They subcontracted the actual work, so the staff
did promotion, wheeling and dealing then contracted out and supervised the
actual work.
   We took David, Elizabeth, Mario and Sherry along with Ramon and Elisa.
With the amount of work Guerrero Construction was planning, Ramon and Elisa
needed to learn how to delegate and supervise.  Otherwise, they'd run
themselves ragged and not grow they way they could.
   Yeh, they (along with Alejandro and Linda) were studying The Book and
detail manuals.  At the very least, they wouldn't pull some major boners.
Then again, it seems every time Elisa or Linda came around, Bob pulled a
major boner.  Me, too.  Hehehehe.
   The actual audit and probe run weren't scheduled for another ten days or
so; guess we were outrunning them.  No problem; we'd done a quick run
ourselves through the exec strata last night.  Nothing much came up; the
"usual" executives were getting enhanced and the President was already one
of us.  Guess the enhancement team handling them knew our priorities.
   We had an hour's chat with the President, VP Operations and the VP
Finance before we really got down to work.  Ramon and Elisa followed right
along with all the fancy talk without any trouble.
   Mario and Sherry dove right into the computer system while the rest of
us got familiar with the developments the company was doing.  They had five
major ones staggered through various stages of completion and three more
coming on line in the next several months.
   JRD Properties handled some of the development sales, but Fillmore Sales
and Rhapsody Public Relations did most of the actual promotion and selling.
Didn't hurt at all to have most of it in-house.
   Okay, time to hit some sites.  Bob finally got to use his Land Rover for
what it was designed for!  He zipped it up from home then he and I climbed
in with Ramon and Elisa.  David and Elizabeth zipped up one of the Reynolds
Construction trucks, so they were set.
   We had our own hard hats, of course, and we'd worn our
get-down-and-dirty outfits.  This time, Bob didn't dare refer to me as arm
candy; maybe he remembered the sore shoulder I'd given him the last time
he'd tried it.  Grin.
   The first site was predictably messy, as most sites are.  The work was
going full steam ahead without our supervision, so we didn't try to
supervise.  The foreman was tagged for enhancement and had gotten the word
we'd be out.
   He didn't have a thing to hide except a couple illegals who'd slipped in
under the radar.  No big deal, they'd get handled.  This site was just
getting started with the initial road grading and land leveling.
   We spent most of the time going over who was doing what to what and why
with Ramon and Elisa.  Yeh, they were familiar with construction, but not
American-style construction.
   We'd picked out a half dozen different sites in various stages of
completion so they'd cover the gamut.  By the time we hit the last one,
we'd seen the full range of things needing to be done during the stages. 
The last one was getting the final landscaping and clean up.
   Ramon and Elisa had sucked up information and ideas all day like
Irishmen suck up whiskey at a wedding -- at least the weddings we'd been
to. We collected the visitors and a couple of the executives then went to
dinner.
   The execs filled us in on the plans the company had for future work and
expansion into other areas.  Currently, they did developments from the I-5
out to Santa Barbara.  They were in the serious planning stage of jumping
to the Bakersfield area (North on the I-5) and branching out into the
entirety of Kern County.  With several national forests (and mountains) to
the north of Calabasas, they couldn't expand directly; they had to jump.
   I had no problem with that; it made some sort of sense.  So long as they
were doing well and planning the expansion, I'd leave that up to the JRD
Regional Managers to say aye, yeah or nay.  We did pass out the Sean
seminar cards, though.  Bob told them, "This is mandatory for the entire
executive staff.  The next seminar is in Oakland on September 9th.  JRD
will send you a bit more information, but you might plan to take the family
on a weekend run -- JRD will authorize the expense."
   They didn't mind, especially since they didn't have to justify the
expense to Aaron or Barbara.  In the meantime, the Regional Manager would
probably have them start studying The Book anyway since the seminar was
almost a month away and they needed the policy on expansions.
   Everyone left to go home.  The executives had to drive home; we simply
drove around the corner and zipped everything back home.
   David, Elizabeth, Ramon and Elisa joined us at our place for a soak in
the Jacuzzi.  Hah!  We got Elizabeth *and* Eliza with the water jets! 
Hehehehe.
   Elisa looked at Ramon and said, "We're getting one of these at home."
Being very wise, Ramon said only, "Yes, dear."
   Elisa asked the rest of us, "Now, how fast could a team of leprechauns
put up fifty houses on a site?" That led to an interesting discussion.
   Most of the hard work was the logistics of getting personnel and
material meshed up.  While the actual construction did take time, a lot of
it was hand work of measuring, cutting, fitting and fastening.  Fixtures
like plumbing and lights were always done by hand along with drywalling,
taping, mudding and running plumbing and electrical.  Same with painting
and landscaping.  While a crew could save quite a bit of time with power
equipment, there was still one hell of a lot of manual work everywhere,
plus the required time for concrete and the like to cure and paint to dry.
   The consensus was a team of leprechauns could cut down the 18 months to
2 years to possibly two months.  They could do it even faster if they could
stage pre-fabricated walls and the like.
   Now, how would we build an off-planet colony?  That was the question
we'd been leading up to all afternoon.  JRD Industrial Construction in
Nevada built industrial parks; that was a far cry from a full-blown
manufacturing facility like the Cels had scattered around Earth or a Selene
City.
   Anyway, we'd started to turn into prunes after the first hour in the
Jacuzzi and had finished up in the den.  Tonight was Clann Meeting; Ramon
and Elisa decided to tag along since they were there anyway.
   ------
   BOB
   We were still holding the Clann Meetings at Mother's house.  There was
enough room for the 50 or so bodies which showed up and scads of room for
the 500 or so remotes who tuned in.  This was getting to be quite a show!
   I told everyone, "Our quick and dirty census shows we have over 5,000 of
us world wide.  That's double what we had last week, so we're really going
to town.  Keep it going, keep it secure and we'll all be winners."
   I turned things over to Ben to take it from there.  With our Probe
Patrol running smoothly, the Skunk Works and NewTek were the main issues on
people's minds.
   Ben took over smoothly.  The facilitation team had just completed a
meeting on security that afternoon.  Apparently our resident iconoclast
(Kate Hanlon) had asked a couple dumb questions which had opened up the
door to a simple handling of the entire matter.
   There was no real reason anyone needed individual copies of the
checksheets, technical bulletins or any other confidential material.  Since
outside operations was one of the first things any newbie learned, they
could literally go anywhere to look at a checksheet or other material.
   By mid-morning tomorrow, the Skunk Works (Henry, mainly) would have a
complete printed set of the confidential materials posted in racks in
Selene City.  Add in a room full of plants for remote viewing nodes and
anyone from anywhere could read the material directly.
   Anyone with confidential material already checked out could turn it in,
log it in then pick up a simple prompting checksheet which didn't have any
information at all on it.  Piece of cake.
   Though Ben didn't mention it right then, I'd bet we could set up our
global database the same way.  Set up a couple Cel systems and several
hundred or thousand terminals and we'd have a completely secure system.  If
the gov'mnt invaded Selene City, the entire thing could vanish in a couple
heartbeats -- the engineers already knew how to do an emergency shutdown of
the thermionic converter so they could port it away.
   All the gov'mnt would find would be some big holes in the ground.  Now,
all we really need was a place to send it to -- we needed an off-planet
site like tomorrow!
   Oops!  Wool-gathering doesn't keep a meeting going.  Several hundred
_voices_ seemed to think Kate deserved something for her efforts.  _"Soo
Laid!  *Soo* Laid!  Soo *Laid*!"_
   Kate got red, people laughed and her other social secretaries started
taking appointment applications.  My social secretaries didn't get in on
the action; we already had another orgy -- I mean, cultural exchange and
Clann relationship building -- scheduled with Sean and harem.
   ------
   (Tuesday 8/15)
   We went back to Calabasas to visit Tight Fences.  Exactly as you'd
expect, they put up and maintained fences!  Permanent or temporary, it
didn't matter.  Low, high, every material under the sun.  They were even
able to put up split-rail fences; shades of Abraham Lincoln!
   The 250 employees were mainly unskilled to semi-skilled labor to doing
the actual work.  The 25 office staff set up all the logistics, purchasing,
sales, payroll and the like.
   A quick _scan_ told us a couple of the office staff were being enhanced.
Good; after they got some training they could ferret out the illegals we
knew were there.
   We'd brought along the usual suspects, except Mario was skunking today.
The Medinas were there, too; Kat wanted them to check out the fleet
maintenance.
   We split into couples and went along on a couple site runs.  If the gig
was relatively close (within an hour away), Tight Fences would bring their
entire labor force along; it was faster than recruiting on-site.  For
longer distances or larger gigs, they might bring some along and recruit
locally.  Of course, the supervisors always came along.
   Put together a mid-sized bus, a truck pulling a trailer with a tractor,
a Land Rover and we made a respectable convoy.  Of course, the larger the
gig, the more vehicles.
   The first site Kat and I went to was a new-construction site for an
office building.  They popped up a 10-foot high wire fence all the way
around in six hours.  Not bad at all.  They were able to dig the post holes
with a long auger mounted on the tractor.  Almost as fast as the holes got
drilled, they got a post inserted and the earth tamped back in.
   After a respectable stretch was "posted," they unrolled the wire with a
side mounted hydraulic assembly on the truck and fastened it to the poles.
Add several gates and it was a done deal.
   We asked the foreman if the set up would go faster with additional power
diggers and more men.  He told us, "Sure.  The set up fee is dependent on
how much we put up and how fast they want it up.  We could do this in four
hours with another digger, another truck and more men.  Toss in two more
diggers and the support and we could do it in two hours.  Any more men and
equipment on a job this size, and we'd be running over each other."
   The next site was a fence removal.  The truck was pretty empty since
they'd used up the fencing and posts, so things went in reverse.  The side
mount assembly wound up the fencing as the men removed the wire ties on the
pole.  A different rig on the tractor clamped onto the poles and pulled
them straight out.
   This site was a bit smaller, but it still took four hours to remove the
fence and fill in the holes.  Same game; the faster the client wanted it
done, the more it cost.
   We did a couple more sites.  One was a maintenance run with several
sagging fence sections and some bent poles.  With the men swarming over the
fence, it was done in an hour.
   The last site was another maintenance run.  This one was a wooden fence
about 8 feet high which needed repair and painting.  They were plenty fast;
another truck with the painting supplies joined us and they went to work.
   They replaced a half dozen slats, and prepped and painted the entire
thing (both sides) in three hours.  Yeh, Kat and I could have done it in
one, but this was quite respectable.  This was a time and materials gig;
the foreman told us, "It'll probably run around $700.  Pretty standard."
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Quite interesting.  Tight Fences was profitable, well-organized and
busy. We'd probably just let it rip.
   We met David, Elizabeth and the rest back at the office.  After the
obligatory Sean seminar cards, we took off back home.  After we got around
the corner, we fought the evening traffic home for an entire five seconds
-- we had to wait for a car to get out of sight at the house.
   After a shower -- we'd done some work ourselves -- we were ready for Don
and Mom.  We were planning on thanking them for letting us know the Medinas
and Guerreros visas had come through.  Grin.
   They showed up on the back patio right on time.  Mom was lookin' really
good and Don was looking a bit worn.  Poor fella.  I cuddled him good to
ensure he knew I sympathized with his plight.
   With Mom four months along, she had a really cute bulge beneath her
belly button.  I was two months along; if we looked really hard at the
right time, we could think I had a little bulge, too.  We had a great time
_looking_ over our Babies Within and deciding they were the cutest two and
four-month-old fetuses there ever were.  Grin.
   Sarah and Julio had made reservations at a nice place in Vermont.  It
was well over 80 here in North Hollywood and a pleasant 70 in Burlington.
We spent a half hour looking out over Lake Champlain while we waited to be
seated.  Of course, we could see New York about 9 miles away.
   We had on our cleas but played it pretty straight; no faeries or
leprechauns.  We ate, talked, laughed and had a great time.
   Mom had been doing a lot of training on new Probe Patrol coordinators.
She said, "Not that the job is so difficult, but there's over a hundred in
the queue -- and that's after I've already trained and apprenticed twenty
so far."
   Yeh, there were Probe Patrols established in Chicago, New York, Ireland,
Great Britain, et cetera, et cetera and yet more et cetera.  Bob told us,
"I've heard everyone's organizing themselves so I don't have to worry about
it.  Ana, looks like I've got even more to thank you for tonight."
   Mom flushed up good and her nipples popped.  Good thing the garble
shield lets the air flow through or we would have suffocated from the
smell.
   Mom told us the most recent medical adventures.  "No adventures.  We're
studying away at Sperk; all the references we've seen so far have been in
that.  No surprise there.
   "We've found tons of material on the medical field just in the desktop
systems we work on.  We're betting there's a whole lot more around,
probably in one of the larger systems."
   She agreed with our idea of a golf course in Central Park.  We had a
great time discussing the layout, possible hazards and what we would like
to see in the club house.  We decided we'd all volunteer to advise and test
it out.
   We all went to our place and soaked in the Jacuzzi while we let dinner
settle.  Mom *really* appreciated the water jets!  She looked around at us
sternly after her third "episode" and told us, "Don't think this lets *any*
of you off the hook tonight." Yes, ma'am.
   We set up two rooms (Bob and mine plus the maid's room) as old Irish
meeting rooms like Sean had done at their place.  Tons of fun.
   "Daddy" was sweet as every and was very interested in inspecting Missy
Lillian's growth.  The poor guy was tired, though, and faded out after the
first Journey.
   Ah, well.  We'd been listening to Mom get her edges worn down a bit, so
I hopped over to their room while we let Daddy's body sleep.
   Ana was totally yummy.  Yeh, I'd nursed on her in my memories, but
first-hand and now was so much better!  Bob and I took her on an arduous
three-hour Journey (Don _supervised_ and stuck his two bits in where they'd
do the most good) which left us nicely perched out in the Oort Cloud on a
wayward comet.
   I'd say she understood our thank you.  Mario and Sherry were planning on
thanking her, too, real soon.
   ------
   (Wednesday 8/16)
   Don had recovered by morning and was pretty peppy.  Mom looked normal,
which in her condition meant she'd be satisfied until the afternoon.
   Breakfast at the Rio buffet!  We didn't empty the buffet, but they sure
knew we were there.
   We talked a bit more about Selene City and such.  Mom told us, "So far,
we haven't seen a single organism from there we couldn't identify.  There
are plenty by now; people do bring things along with them.  But, we'll just
keep up the checking and keep our fingers crossed."
   We discussed having a Mayor, City Council and the whole works up there
once things got activated a lot more.  Ben had told us the Skunk Works was
planning on re-activating the entire place.  Once it was operational, it
was up to the Clanns to decide how to use it.
   Well, it didn't have to be settled right then.  Bob and I were sure we'd
be in the loop somewhere on it.
   Don and Mom took off; Don had school and Mom had some newbie organizers
to train.
   Bob and I zipped back home and spent a solid three hours on Sperk. 
Dayum, we were even starting to think in it.  The structure and
disambiguaties made it a lot easier for that type of work.  We couldn't
say, "I love you" very well, but we could discuss a process without leaving
any loose ends dangling.  Maybe in a couple days we'd start in on Phane. 
Might as well have two new ones floating around.
   ------
   We _talked_ briefly with Amanda in Chicago then zipped up there to meet
with the RRK folk.  We had an updating meeting with Amanda, Trevor and
Richard -- Nancy (our lawyer) zipped over to keep her eye on things.
   The employment agency was moving right along.  With all the new Clanns
getting established in the area, they had lots of people to check out.  Van
Nuys Temps had referred several high-end people to them, while they'd
referred several dozen to Van Nuys.  Both places were happy.
   Trevor said, "We've got some 75 management-level people -- and their
families -- on the training.  From what I gathered at the various meetings,
we'll be activating Selene City and other off-planet facilities if for no
other reason than to see if we can do it.  Are you planning on activating
any of the manufacturing facilities on Earth?"
   Good question.  Bob told him, "Probably not right now.  It's really up
to the Skunk Works security team.  After that bit of a fiasco in the
Mojave, we're being pretty cautious."
   Yeh.  A good fifty of the Earth-based facilities had fusion reactors. 
Who knows what would happen if we fired one of them up.
   ------
   BOB
   Trevor had located several Irish restaurants in the Chicago area.  He
told us, "There's at least nine that showed up on Google.  Figured we'd
check them out?"
   Sounded good to me.  The first one, Fado, had franchises in some
thirteen cities across the U.S., so if it was a good one here, we'd check
the rest of them out.
   Joan (Trevor's fiancee) joined us before we left the RRK office.  We
discussed our cleas; I told them, "I figured Kat and I at least would
always use a cleas so no gov'mnt folk get too interested.  With the DNA
filters, we can literally leave no trace behind."
   They thought that was a great idea.  Amanda and Richard got some intense
coaching on being Irish then we took off.
   Good.  Fado was really nice; it even looked like what I though an Irish
restaurant should look like.  The food was excellent, too.  We decided to
see if Irish whiskey (for Amanda) or Irish beer (for Richard) had a
different effect on the non-genetic Irish.  Trevor and Joan were our
control cases; they figured they were 80% pure Irish.
   Didn't seem to make much difference.  Amanda and Richard got just as
blitzed as the Irish.  Oh, well.  With our cleas, Kat and I looked to be in
our early thirties to match the others.  We both sampled different brands
and ages of Fado's Irish whiskey.  Not bad stuff at all!
   We all sobered up after we left.  Seems the blood filters work just fine
on blood alcohol.  After we got back to the office, we did a DNA check back
at the restaurant and for several blocks around.  As we'd expected, there
wasn't a trace of any of us.  Score one (or is that seven?) for our side.
   Ben checked in with us, _"We've done an investigation on the observation
posts on the Moon.  You folk interested in a quick tour?"_
   Kat and I were.  The others (now as sober as Irish could be) demurred;
they had other work to do.
   Ben took us up to one of the Earth-facing posts.  The engineers had
posted a notice about the SWAGs they'd made about the place.
   The place didn't look at all well-used.  There was very little wear on
things and just a few minor repairs.  The SWAG was the Cels used it *very*
infrequently.
   There was a medium-sized thermionic converter -- 1,000 megawatts -- a
now-standard desktop computer and a larger stand-alone computer.  The power
leads to an antenna array were really good-sized.  Ben told us, _"We figure
it's a transmitter.  The other Earth-facing post is almost exactly like
this, while the two on the back side have smaller converters and
radio-telescope antennas.  Looks like they were used for very separate
purposes.  We've been WAG'n what they were for; the back side ones are
pretty obvious -- research -- but the transmitters here point directly at
the Earth and there's not much provision for adjusting them to point
elsewhere."_
   They hadn't fired up the thermionic converters on the Earth-facing
posts; maybe when they knew more about the larger computers and
programming, they'd consider it.  In the meantime, even with the radio
shields and so on, the SW teams had decided not to activate any of the
thermionic converters or fusion reactors on Earth until they were
*thoroughly* checked out.
   Just in case.  Just being paranoid.  The Earth-based outposts used
accumulators and the security team had given their no-emissions blessings
on them.
   Yeh, they were planning on firing up the fusion reactor by Selene City.
Ben said, _"Better now than when we have 50,000 bodies around."_ That was
scheduled for the weekend or next week after they'd decided on what
detection tests they'd be running -- and had the equipment to do it.  Seems
like one doesn't just drop into Radio Trash and pick a gravitomic or
magnetic anomaly detector.  Picky, picky, picky.
   Well, that put another interesting mystery on the lines.  Two
1,000-megawatt transmitters could pipe out a lot of Country and Western
music.
   ------
   (Thursday 8/17)
   Pieter Analytics in Brea was Thursday's visit.  Only six more to go
after that!  PA designed and manufactured laboratory instrumentation for
medical and engineering laboratories.  If something could be measured
precisely with an instrument smaller than a bedroom, they could design and
build one or 100,000.
   350 employees made it pretty lively.  There were 20 administrative
staff, 125 research engineers (who designed and prototyped) and the rest
were manufacturing operations.  Kat and I could tell right away we wanted
APICS in here.
   Again, we'd overrun our audit and probe run.  Our own quick probes last
night hadn't turned up anything unusual, so we weren't looking to find too
many Sherman Tanks.
   We'd found the expected ones of us (ten) with another fifteen having tag
nodes.  Looked good.
   Kat, Sherry and I immediately got down to business with the President,
VP Research and VP Manufacturing.  Funny how all three were ones of us!
   They'd been to the last couple Clann meetings and were up to date on
where we were going.  Most of the staff lived right in the area and the
local spirits had formed their Clann two weeks ago.  Good on 'em!
   So, we had plenty to talk about besides the business.  They took us on
the obligatory plant tour; the physical facilities were in good condition.
   George and Don would drool over the R&D Department.  There was just
about any piece of electronic or mechanical equipment imaginable in one
form or another.  Yeh, there was some research going on, all right.
   Sam, the VP Research, showed us an instrument the size of a twin bed
about four feet high.  "This is a wide-spectrum electromagnetic detector
and analyzer.  It may not be the most accurate for any specific range, but
it'll give a decent reading from ELF up to gamma radiation.  Seems the
security folk are concerned about leakage with the fusion reactor." [ELF =
Extremely Low Frequency]
   Yeh, it was experimental in that it was a prototype, but it sure beat
going through twenty-odd individual instruments.  With a monitor showing a
graph of amplitude across the spectrum range, it was pretty obvious what
was floating around.  In the lab, it showed spikes here and there -- one
could select the spike and determine what it was and approximately how
strong it was.
   It currently operated off the 220 volt building supply, but Sam had set
up the power supply section so it could be replaced with a Cel accumulator.
"Should run a couple thousand hours before you have to recharge it."
   Five of the R&D crew had worked on it along with Sam -- all ones of us.
SW security would be *very* happy about it.  Sam and his crew had just
finished the final lab testing and were ready to test it in the field --
specifically around the thermionic converter and fusion reactor in Selene
City.
   Toss in a particle detector set for neutrons, protons, and alpha and we
should be in good shape.  Some of the more esoteric particles required huge
detectors; they weren't worrying about them yet.  How do we detect gravity
anomalies?
   Dayum, they had such neat stuff!  Kat and Sherry were even grinning at
some of them, especially since they could see how they could be used in our
expansion and colonization efforts.
   We took the three to lunch in Chicago -- The Galway Arms.  This was an
Irish pub on Trevor's list.  It was quite a decent place with excellent
food and good service.  Definitely went on the list.
   We didn't try to get them shit-faced, either.  We all had people to do
and things to see later on.
   They didn't blink an eye at the Sean seminar, either.  Paul, the
President, told us, "Everything will help.  We'll start looking at getting
in quite a bit of APICS training."
   Good.  Lookin' very good.
   ------
   Since we were, em, in the area, after lunch Kat and I zipped our clubs
down and went to the Black Gold Golf Course in Yorba Linda.  Sherry shook
her head in mock dismay and zipped off to harass some innocent newbies
somewhere.
   We played pretty straight golf.  That basically meant if a shot was
heading towards a tree, we didn't cleas up a hawk to snatch it and get it
back on line.  Grin.
   Kat tried to distract me by waving various delectable body parts at me,
but I stoically resisted.  Surely Ceann Mor could be above all that, right?
If you buy that, remember Sean Cullen still has some pedestrian rights
available: SQCullen@cullenent.com.
Yeh, I'd been reading Peltz on course management.  It had helped
tremendously; at least I had a fighting chance then.  Hell, she still
whooped my arse by three strokes!
   Winner take all; I treated us to dinner in Cancun.  We liked the
variation from all the Irish cuisine we'd been doing recently.  Pretty
decent stuff.  It sure was a lot better than doing it myself, although that
was completely fine on occasion.
   We spent the rest of the evening getting stuff ready for the Sean and
harem visit on Friday evening.  Most of it was Kat and Sherry deciding on
the decor; Mario and I put in our two-cents' worth, but it really wasn't
needed.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Friday 8/18)
   After our exercises Friday morning, we zipped over to Machinists Inc. 
in Albuquerque to talk with Ned Phillips, the CEO.  Yep, an enhancement
team had done their magic on him and several others.
   M Inc had purchased the building down the block they'd had their eye on
and were busily fitting it out for expansion.  The alley was working just
fine for back and forth work.
   They and JRD Tool and Die right next door were now joined at the hip
through their (now-operational) MRP II systems.  Turned out the CEO for T &
D was now one of us, too.  Why not?  They seem to rise to the top.
   We took them to lunch (standard cleas for Bob and me) and talked behind
the garble shield.  Industrial secrets.  O'Niell's Irish Pub by Nob Hill
had a great patio with their excellent food and service.  Neither Ned or
Abe (Abraham, the T & D CEO) were Irish, but didn't mind a beer-tasting run
along with our meals.
   Bob and I tried some beer, too.  Yeh, sue us because we were under-aged;
our cleas let us appear to be in our 30s like Ned and Abe.
   Anyway, there were at least 5 Clanns getting well established around the
Albuquerque area with rumors of expansion outwards from there.  Abe told
us, "We've got 75 now in our Clann alone.  There's five enhancement teams
working away and we've got a Probe Patrol coordinator in training in
Burbank.  We're steppin' right along!"
   They both were really interested in learning the Cel technology.  They
(and quite a few others) were running right along learning Sperk and were
ready to dig into some of the actual technologies.
   They were part of an SW engineering team whose main function was to find
and catalog the manufacturing technology.  Ned told us, "Our main holdup is
the language so far.  The search capability on those systems is fantastic,
but when you can't understand the results, well...  Let's say it adds some
time."
   Like us, they'd found the electronic dictionaries.  Again like us, they
spent about half their time looking up words and following up words within
the definitions.  Things *were* getting a lot faster though, as we went
along.
   Both companies' executives had attended Sean's seminar last Saturday. 
They were really hot to trot on getting in the policies and had gotten
several of the Admin Scale workbooks from the Cullen Enterprises web site.
Good on 'em!
   By the end of lunch, we were all pretty shit-faced.  Well, a blood
filter handled that in about 10 minutes.  And to think, there were people
who were shit-faced all the time.
   Ned and Abe headed back to their places.  After _checking_, Bob and I
zipped over to Boulder City (Nevada) to see how Technical Publications was
doing.
   John Beal, the President, was out and about; the enhancement team had
popped him and several others the day after we'd left at the end of June.
They had a Clann in operation, mainly with the folk who worked there, and
had helped start up 5 others in Las Vegas.  Goin' good!
   John and Louise Merrill had come up with an expansion plan.  He took us
on a quick tour of the new building they'd put up about 20 yards away from
the old one.
   John told us, "Went like clockwork.  Interesting how many delays you can
bypass when you know exactly what the delayer is thinking."
   They'd called in an APICS consultant to help lay out the place.  John
laughed, "Might as well get it right the first time.  We gained at least
15% in overall production speed."
   Some of the presses were new; others weren't but seemed to be in
excellent shape.  The place was laid out so the physical work flowed from
one place to another with very little backup (queue time) between the
stations.
   John told us he'd hired a lot of the people who'd been coming around
looking for work as well as a lot of the family members of current
employees.  "We put them to work on the construction so they'd know exactly
where everything was before the place even fired up.  Now that it's
running, we're re-doing the layout in the old building so it's up to our
standards too."
   By the time they'd get the original plant redone, their production
capacity would have increased three times.  They were already putting out
promo and were ready to let things rip.  Yes!
   All righty, then!  We had a date with the Cullens, so we took our leave
and ported back home.  After a shower, we got dressed, chatted with Mario
and Sherry and waited for the Cullens.
   They popped up exactly on time.  Yeh, we'd meshed on the dress: business
casual.  They all had their CE hats on, though.
   They zipped us up to their new properties in Stevenson Ranch -- of
course Mario and Sherry went with us; after all, they're part of the
cross-cultural exchange team.
   Melissa told us, "The N&Bs will be doing most of the running at the
restaurant while we'll be doing most of the work at Eire's Rest."
   The places were in the final stages of escrow; they expected them to
close within the next two weeks.  In the meantime, they'd already enhanced
several of the staff in both places, cleaned up Deadwood City and had
started training the staff.
   The hotel was neat.  BB said, "From the surveys we've done so far, we're
gonna cater to the family crowd going to Magic Mountain.  That means kid
and family-friendly.  While a 'tavern' isn't normally thought of as
kid-friendly, we'll handle their considerations on it."
   They were going to put in a small playground near the pool, enhance the
roof for possible nude sunbathing and perhaps put in a small day care
center.  Parents want to get away, too!
   Eileen told us, "The restaurant isn't quite up to our standards yet, but
it's not bad.  As soon as escrow closes, we'll be putting up the new signs
and doing a bit of decorating so it'll look Irish.  We've gotten plenty of
ideas from the Irish pubs and restaurants we've visited the last couple
months -- and those we will be visiting."
   The restaurant staff knew exactly who the Hat Folk were and treated us
exactly as they treated the other patrons -- cheerfully and promptly.
   The food was decent.  Maggie told us, "We'll be renovating the kitchen a
little.  The chef's actually pretty decent; she's just been working under
so many budgetary constraints it's been very difficult to get things up to
the standards she knows are possible."
   No dancing yet.  They were going to build a small stage at one end but
for now it was just a restaurant.
   The bar or pub area was in good condition.  It wasn't so new or fancy
you couldn't relax in it.  Maybe we were jaded, but the liquor and beer
selection was a bit, em, limited.  Kate told us, "We'll be building some
underground storage so we can stock as much as we like.  It's the old
balance between having everything possible on hand and carrying inventory."
   They did have a decent 15-year-old Irish whiskey we could tolerate so we
made do with that.
   We zipped back to our place in North Hollywood.  Someone had been doing
things!  The inside looked like an Irish castle with stone floors and
walls. There were even a few "ghosts" wandering around moaning politely.  I
thought Sarah and Julio would deserve a Soo Laid for their work.
   We settled in to the common room; it had a nice fireplace and plenty of
comfortable chairs and sofas.  Bob told them, "Sorry, no castle drafts.  We
figured we didn't need to be *that* authentic."
   We talked a lot about SW and the Clanns.  Having one of the main SW
brains in our midst gave us an edge.  Then again, Bob and I had been kept
pretty well-informed ourselves.
   One of the main things we speculated on was the lunar observation posts.
Those transmitters were a real puzzle.  I mentioned the thought I'd had
about Country and Western music, so that got a good laugh.
   Sean told us, "I though of bad bagpipe music.  Say, maybe that's why
Earth folk are so cantankerous; they probably listened to that stuff and it
fried their minds."
   That was good for another minute of laugher.  We brought the Cullens up
to speed on how our oversight visits had been going and they traded some
seminar and business jokes with us.  Seemed they'd blown off one
prospective buyer by telling her she had to memorize all the General Ledger
account numbers.  Nasty!
   ------
   BOB
   Sean told us they were working on checksheets for The Book, detail
manuals and the two workbooks.  I asked him, "Sounds exactly what we need
for our companies.  You'll have them done tomorrow, right?"
   Right.  Sean was doing the first general checksheet on The Book and the
Hat Ladies would start the workbooks and detail manuals.  When they got
them done and piloted, they wanted to get some different industry experts
to customize the drills and practicals for their industry.
   Sounded great to me.  I'd been wondering a bit how to make the studying
as interesting as possible.  We'd have 28 companies studying at the same
time.  Eileen told us, "If possible, we'd like to use lots of your JRD
companies for the specialties.  We're looking at doing an online exam and
giving out a certification."
   Kat and I promptly said we'd cooperate.  Maggie cackled and said, "Good
thing.  It's a lot easier, though it's still a lot of fun if you resist a
bit.  Hehehehe."
   We didn't have any serving wenches to drag off Sean, but Kathleen and
Sherry did a credible job nonetheless.  Mario and I leered at the Hat
Ladies.  Mario said slowly, "Revenge is sweet," and cackled.
   Marge immediately jumped on him and said, "Take me.  Ravage me and take
my innocence.  Please, just spare the others."
   Mario kissed her firmly and said, "How about both of us ravage you and
your innocence.  Then, after we're warmed up, we might be able to survive
the rest."
   That seemed to be very agreeable to them.  He escorted Maggie and Kate
away, leaving me to Eileen and BB's (no) mercies.
   No mercy they had, either.  Their Krav Maga training must have taken
good hold, because they took us on a wonderfully-slow and sweet Journey
which surfed glorious waves on the ocean of love.
   And love there was.  Our _merges_ were achingly tender and deep while
our rainbows flared across the space just inside the Oort Cloud.
   The others joined us and we played hide and seek among the comets and
rocks on their journey inwards towards the Sun.  Dayum, we even found
another small mining facility on one of the comets.  Yeh, we even took the
time to tag it.
   I think Sean, Mario and I yowled at the same time.  Someone(s) was
energetically applying repetitive pressure on our poke spots!
   Okay.  More sweet ladies to love.  It's a burdensome job, but we were
exactly the ones to do it.
   
  
Sorcerer Interesting Times Ch 11-15