Anne, meantime, had now completed most of the hardware design for the project, and was beginning on the embedded firmware that would turn it from an i...nteresting concept into a product. She still had more work than she could easily deal with, but now at least some of it could be done at home. This allowed her, with Sid and Ken’s approval, to reduce her commute from six days a week to four, with the other two days spent at home. Anne being Anne, of course, she simply ploughed the recovered hours. Where’s your brother?”“He’s still downstairs,” she said. “We were folding clothes cause we did laundry today. Even the sheets on your bed.”Her mom smiled and hugged Allie. “Thank you, sweetie.” Alex had come back upstairs and shook his father’s hand.“Allie said you two did laundry today. Thank you very much, son. Your mother sure wasn’t looking forward to doing that tonight.”His mom hugged him and said, “Thanks to the both of you. Allie and I will put these clothes away and Alex, you and your. Again I waited for her to quiet down. When she did so, I put one finger under her chin and lifted her face off of me.We stared at each other wordlessly, our eyes only inches apart. I tried to read her soul through her eyes but got nowhere. She likewise tried that with me, also to no avail.Oh shit, I thought, here goes nothing. I leaned toward her and gently placed my lips against hers, not knowing how she would react, not even able to make an intelligent guess.It was like an eternity as I. “Oh hello, my pretty,” he said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for you.” He then reached in to pull it out.“Hey, what happened to not touching it with your bare hands!?”“I do not fear the curse. Tell me, where did you find this again?”“A group of nomads found it amongst the Crusaders’ belongings a few years ago. We managed to “recover” it from them. But may I ask…why are you interested in this particular lamp?”“Oh, because it is so much more than a mere lamp. This lamp, and its brothers and.