Chapter 66

"Done. I'll be calling in my marker soon."

I headed back to the house and into my study. Johnny came in and he couldn't even pretend to take the smile off his face. He told me to expect Jamie, Donna, and Cherry to be trailing me tonight. They'd had enough waiting. It sure as hell wouldn't hurt my feelings. I asked how his Mom was.

"Well fucked. She seems happy about it too. Sometimes she can't even fake her protest," he laughed.

"Have you had to spank her yet?"

"Do what?" Johnny asked, all ears now.

"Sometimes when Nancy misbehaves I have to make her put on some panties so I can take them off her right before I spank her. Next time your Mom starts her whining, why don't you make her put on a T-shirt and a pair of panties and then bend her over your knee and give her a little light ass whiping. She'll know what's up as soon as you send her for a T-shirt and the panties. It will heat her up a lot," I said.

"I don't know if I can take her any hotter than she's been already."

"Sure you can, Johnny, just don't spank her too hard. It's mostly just for effect anyway. Try it, you'll like it, and I know she will."

"I think I will."

He wanted to talk to me about the cattle then. He had been doing his homework on them. He said he wanted to slaughter a few head. Susan told him they needed some more meat and he told her he'd see to it. He just wanted to make sure it was all right with me.

I told him he was the cattle baron around here and I didn't really know shit about them. I suggested he talk to Mike if he had any doubts. He told me he had already talked to Mike and Mike agreed.

He also asked if Gloria could help them for a few days. She had been trained for it and he thought they needed her help. I told him to ask her if she would. If it was ok with her I'd make it ok with everyone else. He left to find her then.

It seemed to be my day to hang around and talk to people so I headed into the other study to see what Frank and Bob had going on. Frank was tinkering with his cluster. He had about half of the machines assembled and as he got one together he found it a place in the giant shelves he'd talked Mike, George, and John into building for him.

"How're things going Frank?" I asked, as I approached him.

"Pretty good, I'm about halfway through assembling these things. This may not be as much fun as I'd thought. It's getting pretty repetitive now."

"Have you figured out what you're going to put it doing when you get finished?"

"Not a clue. Something will come up though, surely."

"Everything else going according to your wishes?" I asked.

"Everything but fueling the generators and George said he thought he could figure some way to make the trailer add a few hundred gallons every three or four days. We're a little unsure about doing it though. If it malfunctioned and overfilled the tanks there would be a big chance for a fire."

"A fire would be a bummer. It could probably happen pretty easily with no one even going to check on it. How hard would it be to just move all the machines somewhere else, say over toward DFW?" I asked.

"It would be a bitch. It would probably take months to get it all sorted back out," he said.

"Well we'll have some more construction and maintenance people coming in a few days. If nothing else I can get someone to check it every day or two from the airport. They won't have nearly as far to travel."

"That would be a blessing. We have it all sorted and indexed now and we have a good search engine operating. All we need now is more data to save," Frank told me.

"Speaking of search engines, I hope you can do case sensitive searches with the one you implemented," I said.

"We didn't bother with that, is it important to you?"

"It is. Do you understand the difference between mf, Mf, and mF?" I asked writing them on a scrap of paper.

"I see what you mean. I guess you'll be wanting me to try and dig up Google's archive of newsgroup post also then," Frank said, and laughed.

"I assumed you would realize the importance of them on your own," I said, trying to sound serious.

"It's on my to-do list all right. Should I move it more closely to the top?"

"As long as you get to it before they are lost it will be fine. Now what were you saying about other data?" I asked.

"I said all we need now is more data to save."

"If we took you to another city how could we transfer the data?"

"If we really had a chance to get other data we could probably do it easiest with some sort of satellite link. Of course we would have to get an uplink and downlink going. I'm sure the satellites are still working, we would just have to see if we could figure out how to use them," Frank said.

"Would you have the space to store the data?" I asked.

"To a certain extent. We could delete commercial web content from the datta center. If we were able to get massive quantities of data we would need to do something else. There is plenty of room there for additional servers. We would just have to get them or build them," he said.

"Couldn't we just raid other data centers in the metroplex. I'm sure they're several. Integrating them into the existing structure wouldn't be nearly as hard as reassembling a complete system would it?" I asked.

"You're right. We could put them on the network, consolidate their data, and then utilize their free space. Many of the servers will just be copies, for use in balancing the load of millions of accesses. We won't have that problem again for many years. I'm sure it could be made workable. Do you think our building is secure enough?"

"I'm sure we can find a way to make it secure enough. I'm going to get Seven to check with the planners who will be coming in tomorrow and the next day and line us up some people to help us out," I told him.

I was glad I'd had time to talk with Frank. In the back of my mind I'd been dreading the loss of mankind's accumulated knowledge. I knew all knowledge wasn't online, but I thought a hell of a lot of it was and I wanted to save all I could.

When we were sure we had a large portion of what was available in the United States preserved we could start scanning in books which weren't already online. We probably weren't going to have much trouble with copyright holders anymore. In fact, we could now also rip and save any audio we wanted to make available. The record companies weren't going to be complaining any longer.

As I was returning to my study I met Seven coming in the front door. I asked how things were proceeding and we went over a few things. I remembered Frank since he was fresh on my mind and I asked her to see to the refueling of the data center's generators.

"Why are we fueling the auxiliary generators? The data center has a line from the nukes that power the airport," Seven told me.

"Well then we need to turn it on. We've been running it on auxiliary power since the normal power went out," I said.

"I should have asked about it. It was set to switch automatically when the generators ran out of fuel. All of our data is in that center. If you hadn't been refueling the generators it would have switched over on its own," she said, and laughed.

"We'd better get someone to go make sure it switches over properly then. On another front, I've been talking to Frank and I want to start thinking about transferring data from other locations in the US to the center. He says we can salvage equipment from other centers nearby and move it there. He thinks the building has adequate space and wiring for many times the servers it contains now. Do you think we can give it adequate protection?" I asked.

"Protection won't be a problem. It was our building all along. Since everything was already working when I got here I just didn't check it out. All the windows and entrances have metal coverings which should be shut to keep wanderers out. There are assets for its protection stored at the airport. If Frank knows what he wants to put there we can detail people to him to make sure he can go take what he wants," she said.

"Last but not least, he says he can transfer data from other cities if he can get some satellite links working. Will we have anyone who can help him along those lines?"

"We should have. They won't be showing up for about a week or so if I remember right. They are supposed to be able to get the satellite based cell phones working also," she said.

"Can we move their call-up forward?"

"It will be easy after tomorrow, when the advanced organizational team shows up," she said.

"Great. After they get the phones working I'd be able to call somebody and try to get a date."

"Speaking of dates. Both the anchor babes approached me today. They are close to needing a little maintenance and they're both private stuff. Can you handle them?" she asked, and was nearly laughing when she finished.

"Ah, duty calls. I'll do my best."

Things seemed to be going too well. Every little problem which cropped up disappeared in a matter of minutes. It made me a little apprehensive. The shit usually hit the fan soon after I started feeling everything was going smoothly.

I heard a little tone which sounded like a doorbell chime and I hadn't noticed hearing it before. It didn't make an urgent noise, but it was noticeable. Seven had walked off, but came back to me.

"What was the tone?"

"It means someone unexpected is at the gate. Let's check the monitor in your study."

We went into the study and walked to the monitor's cabinet. Seven clicked the controls and soon we had video from the driveway's gate camera. There were two large RVs seemingly waiting for it to open. Seven pressed another button and a different chime sounded. She told me it was for the gate duty team, four troops, to go to the gate and check it out. She told me they would report when they got there.

We waited. Soon we could see the dualie the troops had taken approach the gate from our side. They stopped and one got out and walked to a woman who was standing at the gate. After a couple of minutes he walked to an intercom phone inside a little call box on the back of the brick gate post. He called us.