“I hereby call this meeting of the top class siblings to order,” Marc announces, taking his duties as chair for the week very seriously. He bangs the gavel on the little wooden block. I don’t know where he got those, but he seems to really like them. Marc does a good job running these meetings, even if he’s a little over the top on the formalities. I’m not bad as chairperson either, but I prefer not having to do it if I don’t have to. Louise is inconsistent. She can be almost as combative as Chad when she gets riled up, or so disinterested that she does the bare minimum and calls it done. Andrea always declines chair duties, though I bet she’d do fine if she tried. I’d rather have Evan running these meetings every week, since we always seem to get more actual work done when he’s in charge, but we all agreed to the rotation and I’m not going to rock the boat.
I’m mostly just glad that Chad isn’t running the meeting this week. Last time he was in charge, the meeting took twice as long as normal and we got almost nothing done. He keeps arguing with the majority about settled stuff like shutting down the breeding program. I mostly like Chad these days, but his zealous discipleship to everything that Father believed drives me nuts sometimes.
“How’s the audio and video quality, Chad?” Marc asks.
“It’s good,” comes his voice from the screen on the wall after a second of delay. “I can hear and see you fine. The internet at this hotel has been solid since I got this town on reliable power last week.”
“Great, and good work,” Marc says. “Did you get my agenda?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it in front of me.”
“Good, then let’s get started.” It’s fun to watch Marc act all grown up. He’s really thrived on the responsibility we gave him. His mouth still streams without a filter most of the time, but he’s way more mature than the way my log describes him when I first met him. He acts less like an annoying little kid now, and more like a regular person with some oversharing issues. Progress.
“First item on the agenda, the activity reports,” Marc says, his tone serious. “Chad, want to start?”
"Yeah. I put up twenty-two desalinators and solar fields to support them in coastal communities since our last meeting. Solar rigs and filtered wells for another thirty-five rural villages in Tanzania and Congo. When we’re done with this meeting, I’m starting on a solar and battery installation that will support half a dozen medium-sized cities using the wires for their existing power grid. Lucie will send out a full report tomorrow."
That seems like a lot, so I do a quick comparison to previous weeks. He's picking up the pace. I’ll give him credit, Chad works as hard as anyone I’ve ever met.
"I'll go next," Louise declares. "I finished the initial calibrations for the implants for all of the Geologists, and they're all set up with training-wheels bots. We also cured cancer for a Chinese VIP, which should smooth the road for the Mekong trip."
I’m sitting next to her at the table, so she glances my way.
“The Pacific garbage patch platforms are continuing to grow as they suck up junk. They’ve accumulated over twenty metric tons of plastics from the water so far, and the first couple are almost big enough to be commercially viable. If we can get buyers or renters soon, that should help with our financial situation which is still extremely tight. The build functions for the filters for the Mekong trip are in the implementation phase with the dev team, so I’m getting questions from the coders about those most days. And I’m still working through all the legal and logistics stuff for that trip."
“Great job, guys,” Chad says, and my sibs in the room nod in agreement. I look to my other side and Evan takes his turn.
“We finally replaced the last of the campus staff that left when Father died,” he says. He tactfully doesn’t say that they left once the option to make ten million for having a Butler baby was gone, which definitely would have picked another Chad fight. “Now I just need to replace a few that quit after we cut wages earlier this year. Two nannies and three other staff. I’ve got a bunch of candidates that I’m interviewing with Mrs. Hastings.”
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“And I’m happy to tell you,” Marc says, “that the new programs for the younger classes have been very successful. The soccer league was an especially big hit. I surveyed all the teaching staff and every single one reports improved performance and morale for the siblings they teach. With that in mind, I have more ideas I’d like to see happen here.”
Marc starts into the slide deck that lays out his plan for weekly social nights for the sibs fifteen and up. I can tell he’s put a lot of work into it, with lists of all the high schools and junior colleges from Vegas to LA. He’s already got tentative agreements from a bunch of them to bus in interested students to come do school dances, speed dating, and other activities with us.
“We all know what happens when you only have siblings to socialize with.” Marc says in his very best business-like voice, but then he breaks down to his trying-not-to-laugh voice. “Andrea, you remember that time you and Chad decided to try kissing when we were fifteen.” Chad starts protesting through the screen, but Marc plows on. “And Evan, you couldn’t have forgotten how you and Louise totally made out when we were thirteen.”
The shrieks of outrage and the giant shouting match that breaks out are hilarious. As far as I can tell, everyone had sworn everyone else to secrecy, but somehow everyone knew about both events anyway. I sit it out while they argue about it for a while. Finally, they all agree that both of those were isolated incidents prompted by watching too many teen dramas and that Marc has a good point. Of course he does. Only having your siblings for company as a teenager is crazy. For a genius, sometimes Father was a total idiot.
“I’m on board,” I declare, “but we need to keep the costs under control. We can provide the food and transportation out of the budget, but anything beyond that we need to make ourselves rather than purchase. Which doesn’t limit us a whole lot given what’s in the construction library.”
“That’s fair,” Marc says.
“And nothing that could possibly result in pregnancy,” I stipulate. “Do you have any idea how many millions we’re still on the hook for over Father’s lingering frozen sperm pregnancies? And most of the lawyers that did the contracts and NDAs for that stuff are gone now. So keep it PG-13.”
The sibs in the room laugh, Chad doesn’t.
“I’m serious,” I tell them all. “If we get sued for child support or sexual misconduct, the whole trust can be liable. There’s no way we can make it to a sustainable state before the money runs out if things like that happen.”
“It’s fine,” Louise says. “We’ll just put you on chaperone duty. You can see the whole campus all at once anyway.”
I ponder for a moment. Yeah, that wouldn’t be that hard, and it’s not like I care about participating. I’m not super interested in meeting new love interests right now. Lin’s kiss still pinballs around my brain every morning when I read my log and remember it again.
“OK, but that means we have to cancel them when I’m not here. Or get a set of substitutes once we can verify that I’m not the only one who can feel the whole place at once.”
We discuss it a little more, hashing out details, budget amounts, and rules. Eventually we vote on it and get unanimous approval.
Done!” Marc says, banging the gavel for effect. “Thank you, everyone. Evan, you’re proposal is up next. You have the floor.”
“Thanks, Marc,” Evan says, getting to his feet. “I didn’t prepare any slides, but my proposal is pretty simple so I don’t think I need them. I want the records about our birth mothers to be made available. I want to know who my mother is.”
The room goes quiet.
“No, absolutely not,” Chad’s brash voice comes from the speaker. “Father knew what he was doing. The last thing we need is to have new family ties distracting us from our mission and biasing our work toward individual needs at the expense of the whole of humanity.”
This triggers an even bigger argument than the sibling kissing thing and spirals out to a whole bunch of unrelated topics. After hours of discussion, we finally get Chad to bend. We could have just outvoted him, but we all always try to find solutions everyone can get on board with. The compromise we finally reach is that we’ll have access to the records wherever the mother hadn’t requested them sealed, we’ll have visiting hours once a week for calls or if mothers wanted to come by the campus, and we’d only introduce the option once the kids turn sixteen.
I manage to wedge in something I want into the deal: offering currently pregnant mothers a renegotiation on their contracts. They’d keep the baby and get a monthly stipend to help support it, saving us a huge amount in the near term over the current lump sum agreements. We’d get regular reports and discuss the children’s suitability to join the family business when they reach their late teenage years. Kind of like what happened with me, but hopefully with a lower body count.
Marc finally gavels the meeting closed. It is a satisfying sound. Maybe I’ll use it when it’s my turn to lead the meeting next month.