Jack sat on the couch in the living room. Josie and the others weren’t home yet. He

had a coffee table set up in front of the couch. He had set up a ring to project an

image of what the Hangar could look like if he went ahead with his plan.

Some of it would have to change. The quinjet would have to be decided on for where

they wanted to store it for one thing. That meant the top floor had to be for that. The

gates would have to be moved so people didn’t walk through and run into the jet

taking off by accident.

He didn’t want to cook one of the kids with the engines.

The rest of the model showed him where rooms, elevators, and stairs should go. He

put most of the public spaces on floors below the quinjet deck. That meant a dining

room, kitchen, living room, library, the office, a gym and pool area, laundry room,

and a couple of empty spaces that could be guest rooms were there.

He placed their personal spaces below that. So every girl had a bedroom, and bath.

He was undecided about a closet but wasn’t opposed to it. The rooms formed a circle

around the edges of the central area.

Josie had her own floor below that. He gave her a bigger bath, her personal ready

room off to one side, and a small space to work with in creating spells like the magic

model in their office. He made sure to put a mana booster around her floor so her

watch would charge faster.

He put his and Elaine’s room at the bottom of the warren. The space was twice as big

as the other floors. He put in a private bath and pool for them. He put in two offices

for them so they could have their own places to work. He really didn’t have any long

term plan to work on, but it would be nice to have a space where he could draw

something up and build it.

He also planned a mana booster for his floor too so his watch would recharge faster.

The only real obstruction to his plan was how far could they drill down. How many

underground tunnels were there? Would he be opening the Hangar to a monster

invasion if he did do this?

He didn’t want another Door of Tern in his backyard.

And he still had to build a small intranet for them to use, and connect to the

Enterprise.

Maybe he could take any books they bought and load it into a memory with a scanner.

Then all he needed to do would be able to put an input/output device to get that

information back out.

He thought about that. Was it a good way to approach things?

“Elaine?,” Jack called. “Do we have any books?”

“I think Matilda has a small set of things next to her bed,” called Elaine. She was in

the kitchen, putting things together for when everyone came home. “Why?”

“I was thinking about putting something together to hook to the Enterprise for future

use,” said Jack. “Do you want me to help with the cooking?”

“No,” said Elaine. “I am putting together something that will slow cook while we are

waiting for everyone to come home.”

“Okay,” said Jack. “If you need me, I will be here working on this.”

“All right,” said Elaine.

Jack set up another ring and put up a visual map of the Hole in the Wall. He moved

things around with an eye on the other image floating in the air. He thought that the

Hole in the Wall could actually be better as an outpost with the library and office set

up instead of having that space out of the Hangar.

He could seal the door, but knew they would need it if they wanted to have their own

entrance through the wall. Maybe he could seal the door and put in a stargate to allow

them to step outside into the street.

He thought he might have to close the windows so the wall looked more normal than

like a sodbuster’s house built into a hill somewhere.

He moved the rings over to one side. If he did both of them, he thought the only weak

point was the stargates into the apartment, and the stargate out to the Hangar, and the

Hangar’s roof. He was reasonably confident that nothing close to Hawk Ridge could

get through the door he had installed over the space he had taken.

He wondered if he could build his intranet before the Ducklings came home.

He thought that he could borrow one of Matilda’s books for his experiment.

Then they could start putting together a library for Matilda to read, and to store in the

Enterprise’s memory.

He had June’s notebook from earlier. He had left it on the dining room table. He got

up and went to get it. He could use that to test his device when he had it ready.

What he proposed to do would take a lot of work. He should figure out some way to

rope the kids into helping him. Maybe he could say he was doing it to build a card

catalogue for a new library.

He grinned at the thought.

He turned into Magik and formed a ring to take the information from a piece of scrap

paper. He took another piece of paper and formed another ring. It gave off the

projected image glow of his models. He put June’s journal in the first ring. Nothing

happened in the second ring.

He needed a connection.

He let Magik go and stood. He needed something to make a bridge between the two

rings.

Then he would have to make the link to the Enterprise.

He walked into the kitchen. He hugged Elaine as she observed her veggies boiling

over the kitchen fire.

“Do we have some string?,” Jack asked.

“I think so,” said Elaine. She leaned into the hug. “You have been silent for a while.

What are you doing?”

“I’m thinking we can load books into a viewer and then use that to search them for

things,” said Jack. “I am trying to build a test model so I can present it to the girls and

enlist their aid in filling it.”

“A small library?,” asked Elaine.

“Yep,” said Jack. “We might have to go book shopping. I’ll get Case and Caroline to

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

help me with it.”

“I do have a question,” said Elaine. “Why is Josie helping them?”

Jack considered the question, thinking about everything. He finally decided the only

answer he could give.

“Deep down, under all that crustiness, and fury, and murderous intent, Josie is a soft

touch and natural matchmaker,” said Jack. “It makes her happy that others are happy.”

“And you?,” said Elaine.

“I just want to see if Case crashes and burns,” said Jack. He grinned and stole a kiss

while she frowned at him.

“I think you are just as invested in this as Josie,” said Elaine. “You just don’t want to

admit it.”

“I assure you there is only one love that I think about all the time,” said Jack. “I’m

only invested in Case and Caroline because Josie is invested, and I don’t really

understand why she is so invested since she usually takes after her mother.”

“What was Josie’s mother like?,” said Elaine.

“We didn’t get along,” said Jack. “She was unpleasant.”

“Can you give me an example?,” said Elaine.

“When we were kids, Josie’s mom didn’t like us hanging out with each other,” said

Jack. “She wasn’t that great with Josie hanging out with my sisters either. One time

I was walking Josie home, and she sprayed me with bear spray, and called the Watch

on me. She told the cops I was molesting her girl.”

“Were you?,” said Elaine.

“No,” said Jack. “Josie punched her mom in the face for that. She had to sit through

hours with the Watch to clear me. That’s when she started living on the street.”

“Her mother look for her?,” asked Elaine.

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “I don’t think so. We, my sisters and I and Grandma, sort

of quasi-adopted her. So even though she didn’t want to stay with us, we made sure

she could live as well as she could on her own. When I turned eighteen, I joined the

Army. She joined her band. We still kept in touch even then. June wrote me and said

there were problems but Josie wanted to handle it on her own. When I cashed out, I

came home to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.”

“And then you both came here,” said Elaine.

“Luck,” said Jack. “The watches were in a box at Mister Warner’s shop, and that was

when we were drafted.”

“Do you regret it?,” said Elaine.

“No,” said Jack. “I don’t do things I regret later.”

“Never?,” said Elaine.

“Never ever,” said Jack. “Don’t get me wrong. I made mistakes, but I don’t regret

them. They are just things I screwed up.”

“We are far afield from your string,” said Elaine. “Are you sure this will work like

you want?”

“Not really,” said Jack. “It’s just a shortcut.”

“How so?,” said Elaine. She went to a drawer full of odds and ends. She found a ball

of string in it. She idly wondered where that had come from.

“Say we have the archive put in the reader,” said Jack. He inspected the string. “We

would only have to tell the reader to search for one thing. Then it would show us the

context of the thing and maybe adjoining pieces of information that might be

important.”

“The fish people in Accordly for example,” said Elaine.

“The reader would search every mention of them in our archive,” said Jack. “If we put

in Mister Warner’s, it would search his too.”

“And what do we do with this information,” said Elaine.

“We use it to get through any quest that much faster,” said Jack. “If I can hook the

reader to the Enterprise, the artificial brain on board will be able to give us a partial

solution in seconds.”

“I like that,” said Elena. “If we can get copies of the histories, we could load that so

you know how things shaped the kingdoms the way they are now.”

“What do you want to do when the kids take over for us?,” asked Jack.

“I have no idea,” said Elaine. “What happens to you when that happens? Will you still

be able to use your watch? Will you want to move to some quiet village and watch

the world move without your hand at the rudder?”

“I was thinking that we could explore and see what other places held for us,” said

Jack.

“Really?,” asked Elaine.

“We can see what the other planets in this system looks like,” said Jack. “Maybe get

them ready for expansion from this planet and set up colonies for people to live on

those other planets.”

“That is a strange idea,” said Elaine. “No one will want to live away from Gaia.”

“I am hoping that people will want to explore and look around,” said Jack. “I admit

that the reason we went into space back home was competition between nations

to see who could do it first.”

“The King might agree to this if there was some kind of financial reward for him,”

said Elaine. “I don’t think he wants to govern more territory.”

“Exploration isn’t a big thing here, I take it,” said Jack.

“A lot of places have already been mapped out, and trade has been established

beyond the sea,” said Elaine. “No one has imagined moving beyond the edge of

air as far as I know.”

“I guess I can put that idea on hold,” said Jack.

“It’s still a worthy idea,” said Elaine. “It will probably be something our children will

be interested in when we have them.”

“How many kids?,” asked Jack.

“As many as your stamina will allow,” said Elaine.

“I will definitely work extrahard to bring that up,” said Jack. “Let me see if my idea

will work. Do you need help with the cooking?”

“No,” said Elaine. “I think it will be close to done when everyone gets back.”

“All right,” said Jack. “I’m going to take this string and see if I can make this recorder

prototype work well enough to make a better one to hook to the Enterprise. Then

I can load up the archives, and plan a library raid.”

“I think Matilda would be exceptionally happy to go on such a thing,” said Elaine.

“I’ll send Laura down to the Guild to see if she can get maps and things,” said Jack.

“That will help with the Enterprise’s navigation.”

“When you first came here, did you see doing any of this?,” asked Elaine.

“No,” said Jack. “I didn’t think about finding a woman who loved me as much as

I loved her at all. I was thinking I would be alone until I went home.”

“Flattery will get you another five minutes,” said Elaine. She smiled at him.

“I will be ready,” said Jack. He kissed her before going back to the living room.

He tied the end of the string to the reader. He pulled it out until he could wrap the ball

part around the projector. He cut the ball with the rest of the string loose with his

pocket knife and put it to one side.

He called on Magik and formed the string into a link between the two devices. The

book in the reader became a page in the projector. That had worked out like he

planned.

“Show me Mister Warner,” said Jack.

Windows popped up in the projector to show every mention of Mister Warner by June

in the report. A small sense of excitement ran through Jack. They could gather the

information and sort it instantly.

Jack let Magick go. He took the archive notebook out of the reader. The image

disappeared. He frowned. He needed a memory storage unit to hold the information

after it was read. He should have known.

That was something else he needed to build and link to the projector.

And he stilled need to check if the Enterprise could use the projector and reader.

He still had time to figure things out. Josie and the kids probably wouldn’t be home

for another hour or so. He could put the memory storage in place before they got

home.

He needed a room at the Hangar for the memory banks. He didn’t want to build

something small only to have it fill up after two notebooks.

If he could make this work, it might be the kind of help they needed to accomplish

their goals. It would be on par with Josie’s model of the country.

“Add a space for memory storage banks in the new Hangar,” said Jack.

His model extended a side room off the library and filled it with vertical lines to

indicate shelving.

He still needed a small memory board to run his small gadget.

And he needed material to build it.

He got up and went back to the kitchen. Elaine glanced at him. She waited for him to

tell her what was on his mind.

“I have to go out to the Hangar,” said Jack. “I need some raw materials.”

“How did your device work?,” asked Elaine.

“It reads the book, shows you an image of whatever you are searching for, but as soon

as you take the book away, the image shuts down,” said Jack. “I need to give it a

memory so it will remember the book so we don’t have to load them up every time

we need to do research.”

“I understand,” said Elaine. “How will you do that?”

“I was thinking that I need to make something to hold the memory,” said Jack. “So

I am thinking now that I should go out to the Hangar, and grab one of the plants and

turn that into something that I need. Then try to hook everything together.”

“Do you need me to go with you,” said Elaine.

“Do you want to?,” said Jack. “This will only take five minutes.”

“Everything is next to done,” said Elaine. “I can let it sit by itself that long. We

should do this and then call Josie to make sure she is coming home with the

Ducklings.”

“I doubt Josie is going to stay up north,” said Jack. “But you’re right. We should get

this done, and then come back.”

“Let’s go,” said Elaine. “The faster we do, the shorter time it takes us.”

Jack took her hand and they walked through the apartment to the gate, and then out

to the Hangar.