Forever Yours
61
Action
HENRY AND BEAU left the Alice Project office and went to his private office where he turned his computer to the conference room security camera where the hackers were gleefully downloading all the code and email they could find. Henry found it odd that only two of the hackers wore uniforms.
“You’re confident in this code security?” Beau asked.
“In any situation that is doubtful, the AI is instructed to contact me directly for permission. Nothing will happen until the code is opened offsite.”
“And if it doesn’t receive a response from you?”
“If there is no response in 30 minutes, then the computer self-destructs,” Henry said.
“How?”
“It’s given a format command. Everything on the computer is erased and the drives are formatted clean. There isn’t even a system left on the drive, so it will need to be reinstalled remotely,” Henry said.
He looked at the high-end laptops the hackers were using and smiled. He wondered how many times they’d had to start over when they tried to breach the perimeter.
In the conference room, Edinger turned away from everyone else and answered his cell phone. They weren’t piping sound in on the security camera to Henry’s office, but they could see Edinger’s face change expression and pale. He subconsciously straightened his posture and all but saluted as he disconnected and turned to his minions.
There was a sudden scramble to close computers and leave the room as if a bomb was about to explode. Nathan and Darrel followed them out and escorted them to the lobby. They didn’t turn back as they left and piled into two black Suburbans.
Henry turned to his grandfather-in-law.
“What just happened?” he asked.
“It looked like they got urgent orders to be elsewhere,” Beau answered.
They left Henry’s office and went upstairs to where Nathan and Darrel were just returning.
“Did you see that?” Nathan asked when he saw Henry. “That could only have been an REMF order. Edinger closed his phone and barked out ‘Abort! On the double.’ One guy made another poke at the keyboard and Edinger slammed the lid on his computer so hard the kid thought his fingers were broken. He was crying and shaking his hand as they left.”
“Who did you call, Beau?” Henry asked.
“No one. Admiral Pearson called me.”
“Who is Admiral Pearson?”
“He’s the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff,” Nathan said, looking at Beau in wonder.
Beau was on his phone again.
“Juan, resume all operations at normal speed. Thank you for your cooperation,” he said. “Stop by the office next week for a drink. I’ll assign every Longshoreman on the Intracoastal a $500 bonus if everything is back on schedule by end of day tomorrow… You bet. Love to Maria and the kids.”
Beau disconnected the call and smiled at his grandson-in-law.
Germaine, Lisa, Solange, and Cassie picked up Chastity, Henry, and Beau at the office. They went directly to the Realtor’s office and signed the papers, setting a closing for the next week.
Beau insisted that he take the whole family, including Germaine, out to eat at a nice restaurant, since he and Solange were heading back to Louisiana on Tuesday. Ryan and Sylvia met them at the restaurant.
“We’ve had a wonderful weekend,” Beau said as they gathered at the table. “Looking forward to the great things that come in the future, as well as the growth of this little infant.”
“You can say that again,” Ryan agreed. “Our families are truly blessed.”
“I’m feeling better about the whole legacy project,” Sylvia said. “I was thinking I’d do it, but it was a little silly. After all, if Henry had a question about something from our lives, he could just ask us. But now, seeing Cassie and thinking back at how terribly long ago it was that I lost my parents, I’m seeing more sense in it and I’m going to spend more time putting information in it.”
“I think we all know that we don’t have enough time in life. We don’t think to ask certain questions until it’s too late,” Solange said. “We think, ‘I’ll ask that in the morning,’ but the morning never comes, or perhaps we just forget about it in the light of day.”
“Happened to me last week,” Henry said.
“What?” Lisa asked.
“Well, it was the middle of the night and you’d just fed Cassie. She was still a little fussy and I flipped on the computer to Dad’s Forever Yours. I said, ‘Hey, Dad. When I was a baby, did you sing any lullabies to me when I was fussy?’ It was about two in the morning, so I didn’t feel like I could just call you right then.”
“Don’t tell me, you got the everybody, everything, everywhere song!” Ryan laughed.
“Yes… after being told I was a fussy baby,” Henry answered.
“He wasn’t a fussy baby!” Sylvia interjected. “Why would Forever Yours tell him that?”
“It probably has to do with me getting the baby whenever you were asleep. So, you weren’t awake when the baby fussed,” Ryan said.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Henry said. “I plan to ask yours a similar question soon.”
“Isn’t that the way of life?” Beau asked. “Ask two people who share a life, and an environment, and children together the same question and they will answer in different ways. It just shows how different our perceptions are.”
“It’s a lot about how what we experience is filtered through our emotional and mental perspective. The three of us can sit beside each other through a movie and all three have a different view of it. There are no absolutes in the world,” Lisa said.
“So have you started recording your Forever Yours?” Solange asked Lisa and Chastity.
“I find that I’m recording hours a day,” Lisa said. “I used to keep a diary when I was in high school because I was afraid I would forget important things. I know that when I asked my parents questions about this or that, it wasn’t unusual for them to say, ‘Oh, I don’t remember.’ Then I realized the things I wrote weren’t really the important things. Now, the most important thing is Cassie. I’m kind of back to recording everything.”
“Chastity?”
“Um… No, Grandma. Unlike my sweetheart, I didn’t want to remember anything. I didn’t live a good life. I even asked Henry to erase as much as he could find online. I started a new life when Lisa became my love and that’s the only life I want to leave a record of for our daughter.”
“It’s purged and forgotten, love,” Henry said.
“Here is to having all the memories we want and none that work us ill,” Beau said, raising his glass.
After Beau and Solange left on Tuesday, family life finally settled down for Henry, Lisa, Chastity, and Cassie.
Chastity continued to go into the office each day. Most things were running well, but she was putting the final touches on the agreement for the expansion building next to their office. Ray had received clearance to build five stories with a two-floor underground parking ramp. After some deliberation by the board, they signed a lease for the entire building. Their plan was to immediately start hiring as many as fifty new employees, covering all disciplines. Nearly half, however, were developers and development managers.
Germaine pitched in at home to help pack. It was a much larger job to pack three adults and a baby, plus all their accumulated furniture, computers, and household goods, than it had been for any of them to move into the row house.
And Germaine had to pack as well. They seemed pleased with the small apartment attached to the house over the two-car garage, but none of the family had ever seen where they currently lived.
“I don’t have too much,” they assured the family. “I might actually have to buy some furniture.”
“If you do, we’ll give you a furniture allowance,” Lisa declared. “In fact, why don’t we set that up now and you can order whatever you want.”
“I could use a new bed. Or at least a mattress and springs. The bed came over from Ukraine with my grandparents.”
“Consider it done. You have a $3,000 setup allowance,” Lisa said firmly. “Please, we want you to be a part of our family for a long time.”
“Thank you, Miss Lisa. I do consider myself to be very close to the family. And I love sitting with Cassie. I know my parents and grandparents would love her, too.”
“Invite them for a visit when we get settled. There is room in this giant house,” Henry said.
“We’ll see,” Germaine sighed.
Henry hoped Germaine would one day put their life into a Forever Yours singularity. They had asked their grandparents to participate. He didn’t know the whole story, but he’d gathered that their parents and grandparents had moved from the US to Canada in the past five or six years.
Henry, Lisa, and Chastity closed on the house Monday afternoon and a truck with actual movers blocked the street in front of the row house for four hours while they loaded everything and then made a stop at Germaine’s little apartment where it took them half an hour.
Moving into the new house was a rapid process, unless one included unpacking and putting things away. Even with Ryan and Sylvia’s help over the weekend, it was a lengthy process.
The next week was more of the same, but Chastity had to go to work. With the lease signed on the new building, it was time to start the new hiring in earnest. They would take possession of the adjoining space on the first of September and new employees were asked to report to work on the third, the day after Labor Day. After a brief orientation, the new employees would be charged with organizing the offices. The new office would be for research and development, divided roughly into Alice Project, Paving Project, and Power Cells. The bulk of Agora Fuel Cells company research and development would move to Pittsburgh, while the manufacturing would remain in Minnesota where they already had a factory set up. Existing Open Cloak development would move to the top two floors of the new building.
Henry stayed away from the hiring process when it came to the managers selecting their own employees, however he did have to go in on a few occasions to hire a good R&D manager. Rick Wazinski was chosen to head up that half of the company. He had a PhD in engineering research and development. He immediately met with the managers of the R&D projects, discovering that two were actually not part of his department. Agora Fuel Cells was a separate wholly owned subsidiary of Open Cloak and would primarily work to report their progress through Rick. Dale Jacoby headed up the separate entity of American Intelligent Machines.
Mia suggested they work on a three-way split of the Alice Project. Rick kept her as manager of the AI development for holography in general. He hired a separate manager with deep imaging experience to lead the traditional holography and improvements they could make there. And finally, he hired some actual scientists who had experience in working on the concepts of spatial holography and kept a close eye on them himself.
For Henry’s part, once Rick was hired, he went back home to be with his wife and baby. His mind, however, was working fast. He poked his head into Lisa’s new office where she was making appearances on occasion, but was not back to work full-time. Henry happily played with Cassie and marveled at her rapid development as a small person. In the playroom, they kept a camera and sound equipment and whether it was Henry or Lisa or Chastity or Germaine, the stories they told the infant, the songs they sang to her, and the way they interacted with her were recorded to be added to their singularities.
Henry liked the technology and spent several late nights in his little computer room analyzing the content—mostly on his own singularity. He wasn’t always happy with the kind of answers the program gave him to questions he posed as if he were his daughter, looking back over a number of years. Having a child, however, drove him to record more of his life with a greater urgency.
He stopped himself, however, before he made adjustments to the program. There was one way to influence a course of action that he seldom used.
Pythia, should I leave a good impression for my daughter, even if it isn’t exactly the way I behaved? I’m trying to figure out something about the singularity. Can we succeed in changing our character in the record of our lives? I don’t want to lie about my life, but there are some things I’m unhappy with. They seemed like right decisions at the time, but was leaving a trail of evidence to get rid of someone an ethical way to handle the situation? Was it right to erase part of Chastity’s life, even though she asked me to? Should I have found a different way to help Kaitlyn than tampering with her trust fund?
Even now, I’m conflicted about how we handled the Pentagon. I mean, I didn’t do everything. I didn’t slow the flow of traffic on the Intracoastal. But I did put safeguards in the software, specifically to counter the very kind of behavior we suspected of the Pentagon. I feel like I’m playing with people’s lives. Should I let them do their job and take the consequences, even though doing their job would hurt my company and people?
I want—very much—for my daughter to see in me an ethical person. I want to be a good example. I’m just conflicted over some of my own choices.
Getting an answer from Pythia Speaks was not difficult. Making sense of an answer from Pythia Speaks was a long and arduous task. Understanding that the questions he posed to Pythia were also recorded by his singularity didn’t even occur to him.
It is painful to admit a wrongdoing. There are many life experiences people find embarrassing that are not, by any legal definition, a wrongdoing. What’s more important, though, is whether your subsequent action compounds the initial embarrassment or wrongdoing.
Certainly, admitting a wrong course of action should be seen as a noble endeavor, but does it help? Does your attempt to paint yourself as a better person exempt you from your past? Will your child discover this on her own and then be dubious of her parent’s motives and honesty?
When you ‘erase the past’ of either yourself or a loved one, does it cease to exist? When you ‘leave a trail of evidence,’ is it for justice or revenge?
You are a person of great power. How will you… Not how do you… How will you use that power?
“Don’t you just love air conditioning?” Lisa sighed. “The last month of my pregnancy, I never wanted to see the sun again. I was so hot and miserable, I thought July had it in for me personally.”
She stretched languidly on the bed. All three lovers were naked and Cassie was peacefully sleeping in her cradle.
“It’s still hot outside,” Chastity said. “Tomorrow, the office will be hotter than usual as everyone starts packing up their boxes to move to the new building.”
“I hope we didn’t make a mistake taking on that big of a financial burden,” Henry sighed.
“Oh, lover. The rent is modest compared to the number of people we’re hiring,” Chastity said. “There will only be twenty starting in a week, but we’ve put together a chart that includes thirty more.”
“How on earth are you allocating space?” Lisa asked, kissing her lovers and beginning to pet them. She definitely liked the cool environment of their new home.
“American Intelligent Machines will take up all the ground floor. It has double height ceilings and hangar-like doors on the back. It won’t be a manufacturing facility, but it will have a fabrication workshop where the next generation of paving technology can be built with the brain right in it,” Chastity said.
“It won’t be too noisy or dirty, will it?” Henry asked.
“Good sound insulation should make it nearly vibration-proof,” Chastity said. “As to dirt, the robotics people are afraid computers might be too dirty to have around the delicate precision machines.”
“Good luck to them convincing anyone of that,” Lisa laughed.
“The second floor has Agora Fuel Cells R&D. They won’t fill the floor, but we’ll have new expansions soon, I’m sure. The third floor will be the Alice Project. Rick and Mia specified some new allocations of office space. The traditional holography group will continue to work in a fairly small area. Mostly their tasks are integrating the AI brain to the holographs, and generating new imagery. We need a whole library of avatars for the release. We have inquiries coming in from all over the country. Even some of the big animation houses are asking about using the AI holography for their movies and exhibitions.”
“That’s good news,” Henry said. “Ooh. You are getting frisky, o mother of my child.”
“I like having a cool bedroom,” Lisa grinned as she playfully bit at his chest. “What can I say?”
“I might have to do a little nibbling of my own,” Chastity said, stroking Lisa’s back.
“Rest of the allocation first,” Lisa giggled. “It’s just fascinating. Don’t you think?”
“I think you’re teasing,” Chastity growled, but she continued, nonetheless.
“The top two floors are regular engineering. Forever Yours, Open Cloak Search, Open Cloak Optimization Tools, Porcupine Perimeter Defense, and Delphos Network Defense. They might bleed over onto the third or second floor as well,” Chastity concluded.
Not to relent to her lover’s advances yet, Lisa asked, “What are you doing with all the empty space in the original building? It sounds like you are emptying two floors.”
“Yes, but smaller floors than the new building. We acquired the assets of Gallitzin Marketing and Promotion. Darla Gallitzin is joining us as the vice president of sales and marketing. Her father, who founded the business, wanted to retire. He really didn’t have many assets aside from the company’s goodwill and a few client contracts, of which ours was one of the most substantial. We gave him a good price and he is set for a very happy retirement,” Chas finished. “Now may I have a few nibbles of my wife?”
“Oh, yes. I was hoping you’d get around to allocating some space to me,” Lisa laughed. “I am so ready.”
“You certainly are! I haven’t felt you this wet for a long time.”
“I told you I like the cool room, and I’m horny as hell. You heard her, husband. I’m ready. Roll onto me and put this big hard cock in me!”
“Is it safe? I mean can we do that now?” Henry asked in amazement. Cassie was just four weeks old.
“The doctor said I’m fit as a new wife,” Lisa said. “Now you get in that end and let me have my wife on my face here!”
“Oh, yes!” Chastity yelled. She straddled Lisa’s head as Henry sank into his wife’s slippery channel.
“This! This!” Henry gasped. “I love everything we do, my sweet wives, but I love this!”
“Oh, so do I. And I haven’t had it for over two months.” Lisa immediately began slurping Chastity’s wet pussy as Chas found Lisa’s clit between her and Henry.
It took a little longer than it sounded like it would. For all of them. It was just too exciting and everyone was concerned about directions and combinations. They rolled and disconnected and reconnected. Finally, Lisa was face first in Chastity’s pussy as Chas licked her girlfriend. Henry lined up behind Lisa and entered her again. With the combination of licking and penetration and more licking, all three rose to a peak and collapsed together.
“I got all sweaty again,” Lisa sighed.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
