Forever Yours
©2025 Elder Road Books - Lynnwood WA
Chapter 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.
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