Miley smiles at me holding the supergirly purse."Here carry this also so I can carry my own suitcase. Just put it overyour shoulder and you can still ...arry grandma's purse with yours," I hearMiley say but I cannot respond fast enough as she puts her purse over myshoulder while grandma is taking my bag out of the van.Miley is half way to the house with grandmother before I can even thinkof something to respond. I look down at the pink Barbie purse she putover my head and shoulder that I am. Supposedly a quantum machine exists in all possible universes. Yet even the AI's that we're borrowing from the Confederacy aren't willing to admit more than hyperspace. That they tell us is something that we can't understand. Well now that I'm slowly digging through the highest theoretical mathematics that humans had imagined and learning where the Confederacy says we were off track, I suppose that without the knowledge base that I'm beginning to learn it might well be impossible to understand. " But Karen did something wrong!" Helen complained."Yes, but being a mother is your mother's responsibility," I explained. "You may control your mother, but you may not control how she raises Karen, or you, for that matter. Therefore, it is up to your mother to punish as she sees fit. In fact, if you get pissed off at your mom for not punishing Karen, then you may not take that out on your mother by making her life otherwise miserable, or rather, more so than you would have." Fine," Helen said,. "Jada piped up from between his legs. "Their loss."He chuckled at that."Britney," he said. He was sounding more like a, I don't know, like atherapist than a stranger I had just met. It was like he was taking myhand and walking me through something I already knew in my head but wastoo afraid to admit.He continued, "Look at your friends. Don't they look happy? Am Iforcing them to do anything?" His voice put me at such ease, making mefeel comforted.They looked completely devoted to the task.