' But she had interrupted the other woman's soothing reply. "No, really, I know I have to do it. I have to do it for myself, to settle things for me. ...I have to get out of this sexist rat-race in this company. And coming to you is a good way to step to one side of the line and see who's in it."And guess what, Charity? My boyfriend wants me to freelance for him, doing my old kind of hospitality work in my spare time while I work for you. Is that going to be a problem?'"I know you have a lot of. Which is about five years, given their current degradation of the biosphere ... but if we want to avoid that, we do have to have to act covertly, but also quickly and effectively. Quite a nice poser, really. And just the two of us to do it, at least as far as we know. Oh, and a nearly omniscient AI and his/her chums."I felt the rebuke, whether it was intended or not — she was right, it was a tall order, and it didn't help that we'd so far failed miserably to even communicate with each other. I. I called my wife and told her that I wouldn't be home until at least 3:00 AM. She said that it was ok and she would see me when I got home.As we worked on the machine everything fell into place like clockwork. Soon we had the line running like new. At about midnight my boss told me that I had done a commendable job and could go home if I wanted to. He said that they would still pay for four hours of overtime. This was great news to my ears. The night was still young and my wife was waiting at. Kimberly's Minivan and Rebecca's Jeep Grand Cherokee were parked in front of the double-car garage.About five years ago my parents sold my childhood home and bought this new home. They lived in a cluster home community. Each section that had four homes joined together. They were attached to each other, arrayed around a center point like flower petals. It was a nice community and the cookie-cutter homes were well designed. It was all brick with dark green trim, just like all the other ones in.