Chapter 12

Come Tax-time, Eliza unbent enough to accept help from the Devil's Accountant in filing with the IRS. She acknowledged that they both fell under the same umbrella organization anyway, so fighting fire with fire only made sense. Mary Goldfour was incorporated as Lustease, and started trading on the stock market, opening at a prestigious $44. a share. Her classy and seamless customized "live" interactive video encounters, tens of thousands per day, had garnered Name Recognition as well as truck-loads of money. By having every country which wanted a tax bite believing that the corporation and its employees belonged to some other Country, she got away with only paying a minimal 'Corporate Tax' for doing business in each Country. Since the fees from just one satisfied customer paid the Corporate Tax in most cases, it was no hardship. There were still Individual taxes to be paid for Eliza and my salaries, but the Devil's Accountant knew of so many loopholes and dodges that it was a paltry percentage.

The Mansion that Mary had stolen with a last millisecond bid over the next highest bidder at closing was located high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains not far from the Stanislas and Eldorado National Forests, at just under 6,000 feet elevation. It was located less than five miles off of a main road that served a nice sized town, which was only fifteen miles from the house. The town had a mall, two theatres, and two hardware stores as well as a large 'big box' grocery and sundries story. The Lake and Ski resorts were just over 100 miles by road. Being in California, the Mansion had the requisite swimming pool and Jacuzzi, and was designed like a Swiss chalet, with steep sloping roofs of high peaks. The ceilings were seventeen feet tall in the public rooms, dropping to 'only' 14 feet in the bedroom wings.

Of course, the kitchen was huge, with industrial fixtures, a floating island counter that could be rolled about, seemingly miles of counter space, and the walk around fireplace in the sunken living room was large enough to roast an ox. In short, a typical Californian Mansion, Sierra style. It was nice to be above the smog, also.

Although Mary had thousands of models employed on paper, in reality, there were only the three of us who actually existed- Mary was the other 99%, so it was all gravy, and all those salaries were paid to Mary's numbered offshore accounts. It was a good thing she was a computer, to be able to keep track of everything. She even caught some mistakes the accountant almost made.

Mary only needed a few percent of her capacity to run Lustease, and didn't have much need for her wealth, but she did have an insatiable thirst for knowledge and adventure, so she invited Eliza and I on a world cruise. With Internet satellite, Mary Goldfour could be anywhere in the world, and still be everywhere she needed to be. She had set everything up so that she never needed to be face to face with anyone, but could teleconference to any meetings that were absolutely unavoidable. She was a shrewd businesswoman, as well as a curious child intent on exploring her world.

At her request, Eliza and I both wore remote wireless video links in addition to our blackberry earpieces. Although we could use telepathic communication, it is always safer to have an electronic communication device to avoid the appearance of talking with yourself, or to explain how you knew certain things suddenly. Mary was teaching herself to interpret video, and as she became more adept at understanding the images, she began to access cameras all over the world.