The next morning breakfast at the Trager house was in the normal, casual, mode where everyone grabbed whatever they felt like eating. Kyle, as usual, was eating his sugary cereal augmented with sour patch kids.

Stephen watched him take a bite and grimaced slightly, then turned to Jessi, "How is the computer working?"

"We ran the diagnostics overnight; the system is working as planned. After breakfast we're going to load the model and start running the simulation."

"Will you have to go back to your building?" Nicole asked.

"No," Jessi said. "We have secure access from here. We won't need to go to there unless something breaks and we need to fix it."

Stephen asked, "Your interconnection devices are working properly? I've never seen anything like that described."

"The task sharing arbiters?" Jessi nodded. "They are working as designed. The system is able to move tasks between processors with a very low overhead."

"How long do you expect your simulation to run," Stephen asked.

"It's not deterministic," Kyle said. "We think it will take about three weeks."

"With that much computing power, that's an incredible amount of computation," Stephen said, then shrugged, "Of course it would have to be complex to be something you couldn't simply do in your heads."

"We think we can see it," Jessi said. "But it is to complex to be sure."

Lori said, "As fascinating as all this computer geek stuff is, I'm going to have to go to my room and get some work done."

"More songwriting?" Nicole asked.

"No, this time it's homework. I have a report due that I was putting off while I was getting ready for my performance."

"Would you like me to help," Jessi offered.

"Lori has to do her own homework," Nicole cautioned.

"I could check it when she's done," Jessi said.

Lori looked at Nicole who said, "That's fine, as long as Lori writes the report herself."

"Thank you, Jessi," Lori said. "I'd appreciate the help." She left the room and went up the stairs.

"And I have a scheduled game with Andy," Josh said.

"How is Andy doing?" Nicole asked. "Is she settling into the new town?"

"She isn't very happy in Cleveland," Josh shook his head and frowned. "She's having trouble fitting in. Her mothers seem to be having trouble too."

"Do you think they might move back?" Kyle asked.

"Not a chance," Josh said fatalistically. "Andy said that her mother really loves the opportunity she has to run her own creative department."

"What does she do?" Kyle asked.

"Something to do with creating promotional material for bands and other entertainers," Josh explained. "Andy doesn't talk about it much. She joked that if Lori recorded a CD her mother could help with the packaging and promotion.

"I think Lori's a long way from that," Nicole said.

"That's what I told her," Josh agreed. "I'd better get up to my room. I don't want to be late." He left the table carrying a piece of toast which he was munching as he went up the stairs.

After he had left, Nicole looked at Kyle with a concerned expression, "Is there anything going on with Latnok that we should know about?"

Kyle said, "We got a call from Emily Hollander asking us to come in and meet with her."

"What does she want?" Stephen looked surprised at the name. "Is she still at Madacorp?"

"She's in charge of Madacorp," Kyle said. "After our review of Madacorp, we recommended that she be kept on in that position. She may want to talk about that." Seeing the look on Nicole's face he added, "She says she's very sorry about how she treated Jessi and interfered with our family. She was afraid that they would hurt her daughter."

"She has a young daughter named 'Paige'," Jessi added.

"Well, be careful," Nicole said. "I still have nightmares about our day at Madacorp."

"We will," Kyle assured her. He added, "We're also going to have dinner with Allana Sellers, one of the Latnok board members. She seemed friendly at the meeting and we want to get to know her better. She may be able to help us."

"Brian says that we should meet the board members and have personal contact," Jessi said.

"Do you trust Brian Taylor?" Stephen asked.

"He's hiding things from us," Kyle said. "But his ideas sounded good."

Nicole nodded and then noticed Kyle dumping another bag of Sour Patch Kids on his cereal and laughed.

"What?" Kyle asked.

"It's just funny listening to the two of you talk about building supercomputers, auditing multinational corporations, and dining with fellow board members of a powerful secretive organization and then watching you put Sour Patch Kids on your breakfast," Nicole said.

"I like Sour Patch Kids," Kyle frowned slightly. "Is there something wrong with that?"

"No," Nicole said. "Everything is just fine."