Chapter 10: Closing

The last year-and-a-half has been very interesting.

My castle is now complete. The Main House is 26,000 square feet (including the 2,000 square foot basement) and is everything I had hoped it would be. We even left a few of the bedrooms unfinished, which was a good thing. There are also buildings for the corporate office and a well-equipped wood shop for my own relaxation. In fact, having the wood shop on-site really helped in the construction. The contractor said that it probably cut down the construction time by 75% or more.

Quite a few of our evenings are now spent watching the sunset from the hot tub that's up on the second floor. Its view of the garden and countryside to the west and south has to be seen to be believed. The landscaper really did a fantastic job. He and the architect don't know it yet, but they are going to have some nice Christmas bonuses in a few months. <Grin>

Due to a couple of events that happened during the last year, I doubled my sustained running speed to 150 miles per hour, and my burst speed to 300 miles per hour. I also gave my strength a "Rage Mode", increasing my lifting strength to 20,000 pounds when I summon it. I also backed off my normal lifting strength to 500 pounds so I wouldn't have to put quite as much effort into making sure I didn't accidentally kill someone.

I finally got around to doing that Master Control purge I had been meaning to do. This time I covered everything that I could think of, including Internet Service Providers and everyone who had ANY knowledge or possession of the software. I even made sure that they undid all of their programming and erased memories before they destroyed all of their copies of the program. (Including backups, emails, downloads, CD's, Zips, etc.)

After several arguments with myself and my ethics, (and with the reluctant approval of everyone involved) I removed almost all of the mental adjustments on all of the kittens. The only control left was the Understanding macro. After a week of cat-fights (Pun not intended) and other assorted arguments, I reluctantly re-enabled the jealousy prevention control on all of them. Their fights immediately ended and things quickly got back to normal.

I was also amazed to find that even after I removed everyone's "Forced" love for me, all of them continued to love me anyway. I had half expected several of them to leave me, but when I got in conversations with each of them later, each explained exactly why they loved me. I couldn't help but love them all that much more for it.

Lis and Anna decided to resume their college studies. They both hoped that their education would be able to help the company grow more.

Speaking of which, Xanthos Industries took off better than I had hoped, and almost as well as Tiffany had expected. While the remote control was our major initial product, we quickly started getting projects from other companies to help them design and build their products. I get 30% of the company's net profits, Tiffany gets 40%, and the remainder is split between the other kittens.

We still get visits from Kira every now and then. She's much happier with herself now, and absolutely loves the changes I made to her. (She wasn't happy about it taking so long, but she understood why after our earlier discussions.)

Four months ago, Tif, Amy, and I took a trip to San Francisco to visit with Mei. (Amy's former lover.) Mei turned out to be a 31-year-old, 5'3" Oriental of extraordinary beauty. Though she was more than a little surprised to see both Tif and me with her former lover, she welcomed us graciously nonetheless. It turned out that Mei had also started seeing a few men as well, (her "Boy-Toys" as she called them) but none were serious.

Early on in the visit, Amy called a meeting with Tif and me to see if we'd be interested in trying to get Mei to join us in North Carolina. Tif was a little reluctant at first, but after I mentioned that I was interested and Amy explained to Tif that it wouldn't interfere with their relationship, she agreed to it. My conditions were that Mei had to know EXACTLY what she was getting into and had to agree to it beforehand. Amy agreed, so we discussed it with Mei.

Since I didn't have my software with me at the time, I explained the "jealousy reprogramming" to her as a kind of deep hypnosis that would be used to prevent any arguments of that nature. She didn't understand why until we explained that there were five other women living at the castle that she hadn't met. Amy also explained that there wouldn't be any "Boy-Toys" allowed, but that I was a fantastic lover that was full of surprises. (Her words - not mine.) Mei decided to reserve judgement for a while.