“None. I promise. But before we go, I want to show you my surprise.”
“Clothes on or off.”
“On. But the other is optional. In your case, I think ‘off’ would just be you showing off.”
“True. I am amazing.”
“I sit on the couch with you facing me on the floor, on your knees.”
“Like I’ve never done this before for a guy.”
“Shuuuush. Not that. Close your eyes and think of the best orgasm you’ve ever had. Not who or where just how it felt.”
“OK.”
Adam put two fingertips on Patsy’s temples, moved them around to just the right spot and said, “Now, relax.”
Patsy wasn’t a screamer, at least not at first. An hour later, after multiple bouts with the mental orgasmatron, Adam said it was time to go to the Mall before the stores close.
“Tomorrow morning,” Patsy said. “I don’t know how you did this, but if you don’t mind, I’d like more now, please. Then we can go if we must. But I want round two when we get home.”
“Tomorrow we have group, so it would have to be later in the day.”
“There’s morning before group, you know.”
“And I’m working on that project. And it includes you.”
“When are you going to tell me about it? And why wait so long for this little tidbit. I could have been smiling a lot sooner.”
“I showed you now; be happy. As to the project, I am going to tell you about it when I’m done. My part anyway. I’ve invited some programmers to help. Five women. You’re going to like them.”
“Exes?”
“Eight years celibacy followed by my fiancé. Not many exes.”
“Is that a no?”
“Correct. Except for my two friends who helped me a little before Lola finally came into my life. I still email, and they still send me photos of … well, they still send me photos.”
“They’re …?”
“Nice girls. They said they’d prefer I think of them while entertaining myself, rather than a video of total strangers. I think it’s sweet.
“And I suppose you reciprocate?”
“I’m a gentleman in every respect. If my Dulcineas wish photographic evidence of my physical well-being, who am I to say no? When we go back to New York for a visit, I’ll introduce you. We all go to Mass together. And I scold them if they don’t go to confession.”
“And you never …?”
“Well, not exactly. At first, no. But later they ganged up on me. I think they roofied me.”
“Rohypnol?”
“No. Big tits and lingerie. I was helpless.”
“Powerless, for sure; I can see that now.”
“Did Lola know?”
“Of course. We all went to Mass together with Tony and Angie. I’m telling you, they’re good gals.”
“No samples in the future. Goes both ways. I won’t share.”
“Me either. When I took up with Lola, I stopped playtime with them but remained friends. It was like they finished their project, me, and now it was Lola’s turn to take over.”
“After Lola?”
“That was the last thing on my mind. But we still went to Mass. They used to come down to my shop all the time. They temped answering phones. They’re bright girls; it’s just that no one ever believed in them, so they didn’t either.”
“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”
“And we need to get going if we’re going to go shopping. We can go again tomorrow after I get some work done at home after group. We can pick something up to go tonight on the way home. Then movie time.”
“Then we can practice some more mind thingy tonight?”
“Yes and, FYI, we can do the physical and mental thing at the same time. You know, double your pleasure, double your fun?”
“Fuck!”
“Exactly.”
Chapter 10
The Soliti of the Societas Regis de Genealogia gathered in emergency session in their inner sanctum with the six other junior Members of the Society waiting quietly and patiently in another room on the floor below. The six were chosen in part because of heritage; their families had been in, or closely associated with, the Society for many decades, some for over a century. But the new requirements in the modern age required not only family connections, history and expertise in genealogy, but additional special skills outside the domain of the private genealogical Library of the Societas Regis de Genealogia.
Security had always been tight, so the latest electronics had been installed replacing older tech that quickly became outmoded. The paper and physical Library containing primary source documents, centuries old, was located in a vault the size of Rhode Island that was fireproof and, short of blasting the vault entrance door open, was not likely to be penetrated unless by two of the Soliti acting in tandem with the combination and codes.
Some few years back, the Society decided, upon recommendation by several experts, that the documents in the Library should be digitized and stored on a new dedicated computer system as a backup. The system would be equipped with impenetrable security based on software that was so encrypted that even the NSA could not yet figure it out. Further, the system would be air-gapped; nobody without physical access to the server would be able even to get a whiff of what was stored on the state-of-the-art system. Also, there was a master keyboard accessible only in the vault that controlled access to terminals. New software that could retrieve data quickly using artificial intelligence was installed to reduce the research time for complex projects from weeks to hours.
The new software also pinpointed holes in the genealogical tree that required further research, especially when connected to the mainframe at the St. James Mindwerks supercomputer in New York City. Supposed dead ends, identifying historically unimportant progeny of some royal family or another, could be found through data sources unavailable to the Society’s database. While the Society’s massive database from known sources was good, nonetheless it was replete with missing heirs and whole branches of family trees.
They considered time sharing on the Mindwerks mainframe. The Mindwerks mainframe was designed to find and trace historical data and categorize its probable accuracy through multiple algorithms that traced data from many sources. Some sources were reliable once in a while; some almost never, and some were accurate only insofar as the source was understood to be the victor in a war who wrote the aggrandized version of history.
The progeny of armies traveling through the lands they conquered left a small army of children to fend for themselves. Some of this data was recorded, some not. But DNA does not lie. There were telltale genetic markers that could be traced back centuries. For example, it was a well-known fact that approximately one in two hundred, or about 0.5% of the world’s population of men, are direct lineal descendants of the Great Genghis Khan. The “Y” chromosome gives his lineage away.
The reasons for his prodigious production of heirs are many, but a quote attributed to Genghis Khan suggests one possible explanation:
The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.
The new, but junior members of the Society, who understood tech better than they understood genealogy, were convinced that, for the Soliti to carry out their prime and secret mission, new tech and new tech methods had to be employed to acquire more human targets that would yield massive returns.
They were correct insofar as they understood the ramifications of their tech goals and how to achieve them, but less understanding of the details of what they were doing and, more to the point, the risks they were undertaking.
Playing hardball with Mindwerks was always a bad idea and some clients thought they could reverse engineer Adam’s tech and quietly use more access than licensed or outright copy and resell to other comp
anies. Mindwerks always found out, and when the customer's systems inexplicably crashed, the offenders always came running to Adam to fix his defective software. When presented with the evidence in court of their own malfeasance, and that the contracts clearly outlined the risks of tampering or copying the software, the Plaintiffs generally went home unhappy. Gradually, most just gave up trying to outwit Adam’s geniuses, so the lawsuits eventually became fewer and fewer.
Governments never attempted to break his source code, reverse engineer his software or do anything in contravention of their contracts; they preferred to have a good relationship, which made costs reasonable and the incentive to cheat impractical. The NSA was a different story, however, as they did mess with the software using advanced techniques and skilled engineers to try to find the golden wrapper. They failed, and when confronted, were given the option of settling out of court and paying a massive penalty or paying an even higher price. The court case would have been embarrassing enough but, when they logged on, Adam quickly scooped up all access points into the NSA system, and through them, every other connected government agency.
The settlement was huge, and the NSA blacklisted from any other Mindwerks tech.
The Society eventually concluded that time sharing on the Mindwerks Supercomputer was something they needed but giving access to their air gapped mainframe was out of the question. So, they passed on the opportunity.
To Adam, that was fine. They could go elsewhere. Genealogical Societies around the world were connected in, satisfied that Mindwerks had incredible security to protect them. Adam reminded them that, other than competing firms, who really cared about hacking into what was mostly already well known and commonly available?
“Ancestry is big business these days,” said one firm. “Everyone wants to be related to someone famous. In some cases, it’s the only way to prove eligibility for membership in exclusive organizations or eligibility for government benefits. With DNA, together with genealogy, we can do that. Big bucks are often involved if we can prove lineage.”
The Soliti, in emergency session, was preparing for a presentation by their junior member about a computer security issue.
“What have you, Jenkins?”
“We’ve been hacked. Not sure by who, or for what reason, but the system we use has been entered through the back door. Not sure how they did it, but they did.”
“We thought the system was air gapped. Nobody could get access.”
“That’s true. That system is intact as are the collections in the vault. But the non-air-gapped parallel system still has vastly important information resulting from our proprietary system, including all our reports and assignments, including results. And non-results. We have a lot of financial records, personal histories and other incriminating information that is on that computer. Our primary genealogy data is safe; what we did with it is not.”
“Call Mindwerks; this is their problem. They fix it, or we’ll sue.”
“You might recall that you turned down their proposal and new security measures. Too expensive is what you said, and the price outrageous. You went with another firm. I suspect a former employee of the firm you hired had the key to a back door and decided to sell our information to competitors. Or maybe they’ll ransom it back to us.”
“We know the problem; now, what do we do? Can’t we hire that guy from Mindwerks now?”
“We could try, but I hear St. James is on sabbatical.”
“Do we need him?”
“Only if you want to do this right this time. His organization can handle this, but he would probably go outside to his Ladies Club.”
“Ladies Club?”
“The women software engineers he works with but who do not work for him. Contract basis only. Specialists.”
“Contact them.”
“Impossible. Only St. James knows who they are and how to contact them. They go by various aliases but they are either just legend, and its St. James alumni, or maybe they’re for real. All their works flow through St. James like a funnel. They like their privacy, and St. James is the only guy they trust.”
“Got to be a way.”
“I’ll call Kalindra Wilson and ask. She’s the COO and CFO of Mindwerks and the probably the only person who knows where he is and what he’s doing. But if he’s on sabbatical, he’s thinking. And he doesn’t like to be interrupted when he’s thinking.”
“How much?”
“No idea. But it will be very expensive assuming he listens to us at all. You were quite rude to him during and after his presentation. He came out personally to meet you, which is unusual, and you questioned his ability and outright accused him of fabricating his solutions. I don’t think he’ll have forgotten that insult.”
“Money solves a lot of ‘offense taken.’ He’ll have a price, I’m sure. They all do in the end.”
“What’s the budget?”
“Try out twenty-five million pounds sterling and see what he says.”
“You can call with that offer. If it’s insulting, he’ll hang up, and that will be that.”
“Do whatever it takes then. We need that data back and secure.”
“It’s encrypted, and the names are pseudonyms. The real names are in the vault and on the air gap. Whoever has the data might figure out what we’re doing, but not about who. But if they try hard enough, they can probably line up narratives to real-world events.”
“Yeah, how? Impossible. Our system is foolproof. Only we know about our sources, methods and individualized plans. The connections are impossible to make without our data and the Library.”
“I’m warning you now; the Mindwerks Mainframe can do just that. Be careful and do not be overconfident. Fuck with St. James and you risk everything.”
The junior associate left.
The senior Member of the Soliti said to his enforcer, “Find this St. James fellow, make him fix the problem, then kill him and his ladies. Get in touch with our German associates and put them on the scent. Leave the people at Mindwerks alone for now, until this is fixed, then kill them too.”
***
Adam was in his Study, his third bedroom, working away at his surprise for Patsy, something he thought would both amaze and please her. Something that she could do right here in San Diego or New York City at his Mindwerks campus. They could be together which is what both wanted. Each had reasons for not wanting much space; they enjoyed being together 24/7 like two teenagers in love. The closer they drew to each other, the more the irrational fears of loss began to creep into their psyche. They resolved to have additional “couples counseling” to deal with the issue.
Things did improve emotionally, they were still together most of the time, and when one left on an errand, or Adam went grocery shopping, multiple phone calls back and forth weren’t uncommon. Slowly they accepted that being apart might take some time to adjust to, but neither was in a hurry; being together was perfectly fine and a really nice “new normal” for them.
The house phone rang, and with Adam being locked in his room working, Patsy answered the phone.
“Hello?”
“Is this Patsy, the Patsy Murray that Adam raves about? My name is Kalindra Wilson, and I work for the princeling. Is he around or has he locked away ‘thinking’? I need to speak to him quite urgently.”
“Hold on; I’ll see if I can get the Grinch to come out of his electronic ‘man cave.’ I’ve heard so much about you and your partner; I hope we can meet soon. I want to meet all his friends. Even his two ladies he seems to adore so much.”
“He fessed up about his girls. He must love you; he’s always closed off about them and the other women he helps. There’s absolutely nothing going on between the three of them anymore, but he doesn’t mind if people think there is. He’s very protective you know.”
“Yeah, I know. He’s an odd guy, part Ninja assassin and part girl. He’ll break someone’s arm then come home and make dinner for me. I can’t cook,
clean, do dishes or vacuum for him. Claims I should leave the important work to the professionals. I’m fine with that. I hit the jackpot.”
“That’s our Adam. But I think that’s why we love him, some strange attraction he has to people and things I can’t predict. But whatever drives his mind, it’s all part of who he is; scary and a teddy bear.”
“Well, I can’t wait to meet you and don’t worry, I take good care of him. As much as he lets me anyway.”
“He says you’re his therapy and North Star. Keeps him grounded.”
“If he means mocking him and keeping his ego in check, then yes. But the work is easy. He disappears on me for hours just thinking, but I’ve learned to carry on without him and let him do whatever he does.”
“Been that way as long as I’ve known him. He goes into his mind, to a place, his workshop and just thinks. Then he’s awake and smiling that smile that makes women want to drop their panties right then and there. No offense meant.”
“None taken. Works on me. I don’t mind riding the tiger. Hold on; I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
Adam put the phone on speaker. “Kalindra, how many times have I told you never to interrupt me while working unless you finally give in and agree to marry me.”
“Oh God, why would I ever do that? Comparing the men I love, we have, on the one hand, you, looney toons and high maintenance versus my Black Adonis who is low maintenance, always present and adorable. Hard to choose I know, but I’m going with Adonis.”
“Your loss. I’m reducing your bonus this year from twenty-five million to thirty million this year. You hurt my feelings.”
“I rest my case.”
“What’s up, K. Must be a new project because you know I can’t help with financial stuff. That’s your department. The ladies? Still in training?”
“Yes. And now with nerd boyfriends. They’ve given up their old business and moved in here. I must admit you were right and I was wrong. They’ve taken to programming really well. As you said, they just needed someone to believe in them. They said they would have to stop with your … uh … correspondence. Boyfriends, you know.”
Patsy Murray Page 9
