Chapter 21

Connie met Charles out by the cars over an hour and a half later. She was still wearing Melissa's t-shirt and her hair was soaking wet. In her hand she carried her dress, shoes, and hand bag. Connie walked towards him, her cheek flushed with colour.

"Sorry," Connie said as she came to a halt in front of Charles. "It took a little while to make certain that Melissa was properly cleaned."

"It's okay," replied Charles, chuckling softly as he spoke. "As I said, Melissa can be demanding. Hopefully, you left her satisfied."

"I most certainly did!" Connie responded, her eyes fixed on Charles and a grin broad upon her face.

"Then everyone is happy?" Charles asked, giving Connie a questioning look.

"Oh yes ... very happy!" Connie replied, her smile growing as she gazed into Charles' face.

Charles smiled back.

"You know you've done a great job here," Connie suddenly said her voice and manner turning all serious. "When I'm here, it feels like life before Clyde and the mess he made. Your family responds to things without the slightest of hesitation. I can talk to them without them going all "yes Mistress" on me, and they interact normally with each other even when we're not there."

"I know," replied Charles with a nod, "I've put countless hours into reprogramming them and the Taylor's. Indeed, because it's less tiring to program a handful of people, I've spent more time on them than what we've put into the rest of the world. In fact, my family is beginning to notice that something is wrong with the world. My dad and mom routinely watch the news every night. Last night they were mentioning how flat and lifeless the reporters have become."

"You know that we're going to have to put in more time cleaning up things." Connie said in a matter of fact manner.

"I know," agreed Charles with a nod, "that's why I wanted to talk to you this morning. I think we should move in together."

"What the... ?" Connie gasped in surprise.

"Don't get too excited," Charles chuckled in reply. "It's not like it sounds. What I'm suggesting is that we find a place, like the penthouses over at the Hyatt Towers. We should take them over and turn them into our headquarters. That way we have a permanent place to work out of and a place in which we can relax."

"The Hyatt Towers?" inquired Connie, "aren't there people already living there? What about them?"

"There are," replied Charles with a nod, "but that's not important. Either we can order them to leave or we can find someplace else that we can move into that doesn't evict anyone. What's important is that we find a place that we can work out of on a daily basis, and where we can live. There's a good chance that my mother and sister are pregnant, and regrettably you might be as well."

Connie frowned at that statement.

"I know that you don't want to hear that," Charles continued, "but it's true. We're going to need a place that we can raise these children. Additionally, we need information and a place that can process the information. We've been experimenting with people in the mall and we've been up loading patches to the world, whenever we see a positive result. Unfortunately, we're not getting any feed back on how the patches are working. Yesterday I saw a news report out of San Francisco, about a man who had a heart attack in the streets. Nobody noticed him and he died. Eventually, a patrol car drove by and noticed him. They did their job and investigated. Afterwards they called emergency services and they came and took the body away. This situation needs fixing. People are doing their jobs, but beyond that they're still drones looking for instructions and the only way we can give them the instructions is if we know that there is a problem."

"So what do you suggest?" Connie asked with interest.

"We recruit the world's reporters into being our informants," replied Charles. "They're our first target. We work to bring them up to the same level of independence that my family is at or better. Then we command them to report anything odd or out of the ordinary. Hopefully, their awareness will help provide us with the knowledge we need to clean up this mess. My thought was that they would report directly to us. That's another reason we need a larger place. I'd like to set up a support team. Information would come into the support team and they would prioritize it for us, and since there are twenty-four hours in the day, we could set up shifts of people to work in the support team; that way there will be somebody on call at all times if a crisis arose."