Chapter 24: Changes

Summer would be coming around all too soon and Molly stepped up her efforts to find a suitable flat in Chareen. It was a tense time while Dan was away with Mike on a long and dangerous road trip to fit a camera system to a new factory on the edge of the bad lands. Jules and Molly spent 3 nights at the Powers, two of them with Gwen, calming and caring for one another and Elle. On the fourth morning Molly woke to Dan and Mike joining her and Jules in Marissa’s bed. They only paused from making love all morning to look after Elle.

Karl had got a position at the Alm institute for at least the next academic year so they would be seeing progressively less of him and Ella H, which was sad but it was a great achievement on his part. Ella would go on to write for the Alm journal of course. Karl also began some software project with Matt and Rod which he hoped would help fund his research at the institute. All part of some hush hush arrangement with Matt. It went well though and got Rod plaudits from his teachers for his contribution while the institute seemed hungry for more and more modules from Karl over the next few years.

With a restored truck. proven on the long road trip into the South West. Dan and Molly were more mobile and she even took to driving it when necessary although she never enjoyed the process the way Dan did. Mike was able to pay him more generously now and it opened the choices of accommodation just enough. They found a tidy, smart, apartment with a big enough en-suite bathroom off the main bedroom, only seven minutes walk from the school. It was in the opposite direction from Luke and Angela, the other side of the park and a couple of streets over but it would work. With the truck and Phil and Billy’s help they were moved in by the end of the first week of summer break. No party was planned that week due to the move and the weather was bad anyway. It stayed that way through the following weekend and only warmed up enough, on the third Saturday, for a rescheduled event to attract a reasonable crowd. It was as relaxed and sexy as ever, with Chloe, the new Sophie B of the teen crowd, getting a lot of attention and wearing very little. There was some rivalry between her and Lindsay S however that made the atmosphere less legendary than the love-ins of sixty eight and sixty nine.

Billy and Phil decided to stay at the Baxter house for the moment as Tom and Jackie intended to renovate the Stack house. Molly and Billy’s old bedrooms on the middle floor would be knocked together into a theatre room, the shower room enlarged and refitted and the general plumbing and wiring redone in a more sensible way. The downstairs redecorated with an eye to entertaining with a larger window on the west side for more natural light. The cost would be astronomical from Billy’s point of view but Tom seemed to think it was a small investment and would pay for itself if they ever sold up.

“Don’t worry. Jackie saves me more than that in a week by chasing late payments from my customers.”

It truly was difficult to say no to Mum so Billy could see how that would work. Late on a Saturday night towards the end of a wet summer Molly sat in the Power’s den. Her lover’s slept around her, comforting limbs wrapped over one another. Mum and Tom had been with them tonight and Ella H and Karl for the last time for five weeks. No one had wanted to go home. It was humidly warm enough to sleep out on the deck with a light blanket. Somewhere out there Dan was passed out having fucked Marie into near oblivion at her insistence. Given the amount Molly had been demanding of him lately, it was nothing less than heroic. Upstairs Ella H and Karl were in Marissa’s bed, maybe Matt was still with them. Billy and Phil were asleep, top to tail on the opposite couch. Who else could sleep like that? Luke and Angela were somewhere with Brad and Sophie. They were all very close now. Patrick still held Ella B. in his long arms, curled up next to Molly, but they didn’t stir. The laser projectors were working overtime and the house computer pulling power from the reactor to do unimaginable numbers of calculations. Every part of Molly’s body was scanned, modelled and projected in molecular detail. Every check, measure, metric, test, projection and simulation of her health imaginable had been performed except the one thing she really should be checking. She saw Marissa standing in the kitchen doorway before she became aware of Jackie behind her. They stepped silently around the naked sleeping lovers and came and sat on either side of Molly. Nothing was said but Marissa took control of the vast model and Jackie put an arm around her daughter and eased Molly’s head onto her shoulder. Under Marissa’s skilled control the model was soon self optimising and responding more quickly. The projectors really would overheat if they kept it up much longer. She tapped,