Abraham is here.” She thumbed the button to speaker. “Now, is Dad home? I want to bring both of you up to date and get an opinion.”“Okay. Tom,...come in here. It’s Cents! My opinion is you should marry him now!”“Thanks, Mom. I’ll stick to the schedule. It’s going to be a little busy.”“Good afternoon, Cents. Abe, are you there, too?”“Yes, Sir.”“Good. Try to keep her out of trouble.”“I’m trying but she has a mind of her own.” I chuckled.“Mom, Dad, everything is all right. I have a very small flesh. With four of us engaged, many hands made light work, and we replenished the silver teapot and rejoined our grandparents in the sitting room at about ten minutes to three.Dad put the television on to warm up, and we all had a cuppa while we waited for three o'clock.Once we had all listened to the Queen's Speech - and at Grandpa Shaw's insistence we all stood for the National Anthem at the end - it was time to crawl under the Christmas Tree and get out all the presents, sorting them into piles. " Damn," he said. "Bad news travels fast." It does when you care about people. When is your last day?" Thirty minutes ago. I got to work and they had a security guard at my desk. I was given a box to pack my things and then escorted out. They didn't even let me get any files off the computer." Are you free to play golf this morning? My treat." I'm not in a great mood but maybe that will get my mind off things."We agreed to meet at the club at ten. I called the club and asked if they had a tee. All the holograms were there thanking Derrick, each bowing to him, which really didn't set too well with him. "I am just a simple man as I said before," Derrick again stated to all the A.I.'s. "Please don't bow down to me, for now we all need to work together to survive the coming crisis."Each of them nodded, smiling briefly, looking at Shelby before vanishing back to their respective ships. 'I'm going to have to discover what hold she has on them; they act almost as if they have to have.