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Discs! Brethren! Pie! (Under construction) Paint It Green (Under construction) Legalese: Creative Commons 3.0 Noncommercial Sharealike, Attribution to Robots Everywhere,LLC This content is provided to you ad-free by Robots Everywhere, LLC |
Chloe"Binoculars?" Z said. "I can do ya one better'n that, Chloe. You lookin' up or out?" "Mostly out," Chloe said, yawning. "Nothing specific." She didn't want Zeke to know what was on her mind. It wasn't that she didn't trust him. She simply didn't want any input. The adults had sat watching the temple debacle, and the flight to Petra was underway. Once she was satisfied that Buck was safe, she would be able to sit idle no more. Zeke had come up with an interesting idea weeks before. Like everyone else, she liked the way he thought, though his way of expressing himself might fool a stranger into thinking he was less than bright. He had encouraged Chloe to clone herself via the Internet. "You know, recruit other people like you. There have to be lots of young moms who are feeling left out of the action. Teach 'em what you do, get 'em to do it in their areas and regions. You can't do it all yourself anyway." The concept had ignited like a gaslit fire. Chloe uploaded manuals and lists of duties, procedures, cross-referenced contact databases-everything a regional director of the International Commodity Co-op would need. She was virtually working herself out of a job. Now she had gone to the jack-of-all-trades and the one man besides her father who had inventoried the entire Strong Building. Zeke had gone further than Rayford, however. He had computerized a list of everything he had found. A tower that huge bore a mother lode of treasures. "I mean, there are binocs," he said. "Some really super-powerful, top-of-the-line types too. But knowin' you, you want the most powerful eyes I can find ya, am I right?" "As usual." "It'll be dawn soon. You want it like right now?" "If possible." "Be right back." Zeke took several minutes. His computer told him where this item was, and he headed for the elevators. (From "Desecration", book 9) Chloe took a moment to see just what Zeke was checking out of inventory - of the stuff that had been stolen or otherwise acquired from the GC, half hadn't been inventoried properly yet, including whatever gizmo Zeke wanted to surprise her with - when she saw the IRC client icon blinking. That'd be a message to her. She found herself wishing that instant messaging online didn't require a public IP address, but from what she could recall of the Stanford days, it was one of the many compromises necessary to set up a decentralized network - a more anonymous system based on microtransaction had been in the work before the Event, but like many things, that had fallen off to the wayside. Not that she was particularly worried about the Global Community being able to do any sort of data snooping; with the recent plagues, the Co-Op was probably in better shape than the GC as far as being able to spare resources.
A cold shiver flashed down Chloe's back her knees jumped instinctively, bucking the office chair. She had to think that, didn't she? Every time she reminisced about, well, being too clever by half... something smacked it down. She had lived with it - but it hadn't hurt anyone. until now.
Chloe thought about it, and felt a need to quickly pray about what she was reading. The answer to her prayer came to her in the form of raw indignation at Carpathia's wrongdoing, overriding whatever conclusion she might've had. Perhaps, though... she could bring this person to salvation?
Chloe loaded the spreadsheet - in Notepad, to avoid a possible macro virus - and quickly skimmed through it. At first glance, it at least checked out with what she'd managed to figure out statistically. Maybe the offer to help was genuine. But...
Chloe thought about it. She did what she did, all the backstage work to keep the Tribulation Force running, because... because it was the right thing to do. There are things you can't fight, acts of God. You see a hurricane coming, you have to get out of the way. But when it's gone, if you're still there, it's time to help others pick up the pieces, rebuild. And that way... you can fight the hurricane. You can win. She'd have to pray about it and soon, she thought, then the IRC client went "ping", indicating the other party had disconnected and derailing that train of thought for a moment. Chloe heard Zeke come back up the stairs. Quickly, she read the last message before closing the window.
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