Mike & Karen Ch. 28

Jonathon glanced at his daughter. "Are you set for as many as five incarnations, Ekaterina?"

Karen gave Mike a look to match Janet's.

"I've surmised you're also looking after the tuition for Lisa and Mona as well, sir, since they've each been a little more lax with their own funds," Mike added. "Very generous of you, considering that Heyman's driving goal in life is to destroy the ruling class in a Trotskyite firestorm."

"DeBourne!" all four girls shouted at him.

Jonathon Blackwell pointed across himself at his daughter hastily. "She made me do it."

"Daddy!" Karen gasped.

Miranda was almost unable to order the next course to be brought in, she was trying so hard not to laugh.

An hour later...

"Did you enjoy dinner, good sir?" Miranda asked as she walked along with Mike, her arm threaded through his. They were walking out in the back lot, the ground firm enough, and the weather mild enough to allow for casual strolls. Mike had seen the expansive grounds once before, of course, and found them impressive. Certainly unlike anything he was used to.

"Yes, ma'am," he said readily. "Excellent pheasant."

She smiled as they walked by a garden that had recently brought out of its protective layers to be made ready for the spring rains. "We pick it up from the farmers at the St. Lawrence market, so it's reasonably fresh. I imagine in Kapuskasing that they're fresh from being hunted and nothing else compares."

"I'd agree with you, if anyone within a hundred kilometers of my town had a tenth of the skill your chef does," Mike replied. "Fresh is great, but preparation is clearly more important. The candied figs in the stuffing were phenomenal."

"I'll pass that on to Pepin, of course, he'll be glad for the compliment," Miranda said lightly before turning her head and smiling up at him. "Was it as good as what you were served the first time you visited our humble abode?"

Mike paused a half-step, but then continued on, processing what his hostess was saying rapidly. Damn, she knew. This could be an entire world of hurt for all of them. He needed to find out more.

"You believe I've been here before, ma'am?" he asked.

"Well, you are leading me around my own garden paths," she pointed out. "In the proper walking order of them, I might add."

Mike almost blushed. It was true. He'd been so caught up in talking to her that he failed to notice he was leading her around like he owned the place. Gordon would kill him when she found out.

"But for the record, I have no intention of telling anyone," she assured him.

"Tell them what, ma'am?" he queried. "That I've been here before and didn't own up to that?"

"That, yes, but I won't be telling anyone anything about that visit," Miranda said simply. "Not even my husband. He doesn't need to know, does he?"

"I might feel better about answering that question if you elucidated, ma'am," Mike pointed out. "Your daughter scares even me sometimes."

Miranda laughed. "Don't worry, you scare her all the time, sir. Like nobody ever has before. It is good for her. In any event, I suspect that you and the ladies were up to something in February, and it has everything to do with a staggeringly juicy contract that opens China to us, and specifically my husband's lines of business technology."

"That's a heckuva speculation, ma'am, given that none of us are even remotely business majors," Mike countered.

"Maybe, but my daughter has grown up learning at her father's feet, and she always knows far more than she lets on. She also let it slip during some random dinner that you happen to speak Mandarin, in addition to some nerdy languages I could never hope to remember."

"It might make more sense for your husband to broker these deals using his professionals, rather than a bunch of university students, none of whom major in business," Mike posited.

"If my husband knew," she qualified, holding up a finger. "And yet, here he is sitting on a new contract with businesses from Beijing, opportunities worth billions in revenue to Blackwell, and he cannot for the life of him remember brokering it. Even my step-nephew Rodney is being suspiciously evasive. Frankly, it can only be my daughter's and your doing, sir."

Mike remembered this 'caught out' feeling from when the young Beijing businessman had expressed the opinion that their host was decidedly not Jonathon Blackwell. And here he was, busted again. Clearly he wasn't nearly as slick as he thought he was. To his amazement, neither was Gordon, obviously.

"And the truth of the matter is, I don't need to know," Miranda continued. "The fewer people who do, the safer it is, I imagine."

"I would agree with that," Mike sighed, trusting her to keep her word about it. "I remember how crazy it all sounded when your daughter told me she needed me to help."

"How did she manage to con you into that, anyway?" Miranda asked, smirking at him. "Yes, she is incredibly persuasive, but I would think someone of your towering intellect and resolve would be immune to those girlish charms."

"Sometimes it's not her girlish charms you have to be wary of, ma'am," Mike sighed. "Sometimes, you concede just in order to get her to stop badgering you with her weird ideas. She told me I owed her because I'd handed her butt to her back during the War of the Theses a few weeks earlier."

"Where Calabi-Yau beat out Quantum Cryptography," she suggested. "Yes, she was rather sour about that, even if she says you beat her fair and square."

He nodded as they reached the back of the lot, overlooking some fields. It looked decidedly feral beyond the property border. It was hard to imagine it staying that way forever, but apparently the Blackwells held the land in trust, as long as they promised it would remain utterly pristine. "And because I completely dominated her, I was at fault and in order to make amends, I needed to help her scam a bunch of Beijing businessmen so that her father could make zillions."

"That does sound weird enough to be her," Miranda allowed. "But that couldn't have been all of it."

Mike cleared his throat. "She... might have appealed to my ego and desire to stick it to the Chinese, since as a socialist, I hate Beijing and everything it stands for."

"And there we have it," she laughed, squeezing his arm with her hand. "You and my daughter against businessmen from Beijing on a matter neither of you rightly understood. Those suits didn't stand a chance, did they? So who was on point?"

"That would be me, and it nearly broke my brain, I admit," the huge blond student said.

"Given my daughter's somewhat driven nature to exceed every Blackwell who has ever lived, I am somewhat surprised that she didn't want the position herself," the matriarch mused.

"The Chinese thought they were dealing with Jonathon Blackwell," Mike explained. "She couldn't fill those shoes. Roddy was the headhunter, while Janet tried her legalese wizardry to help. Mona pretended to be another Blackwell, which gave the suits pause, but they adapted when their boss took a shine to her. Her kept hitting on her all evening."

"What did Ekaterina do, then?" Miranda queried, her curiosity piqued.

It was Mike's turn to smirk now. "She ended up playing the maid, a French girl named Mitsou. The girls stuffed her into one of your maid Angelique's outfits. She looked absurd."

Miranda had to stop now, because she was bent over laughing. Mike waited patiently while she recovered. When she finally stood up, he could see her eyes shining with mirth, even in the darkness. There was a radiant expression he recognized readily, since he saw it in the face of this woman's daughter every day.

"Oh, now that I would have given my own personal fortune to see," Miranda breathed, her auburn hair curling around her face in the late-night breeze. "So you were my husband, and my daughter was the maid. I assume excuses were made for my absence?"

Mike shrugged. "Every party needs a hostess. Heyman got your part."

Miranda was laughing again. Mike found it encouraging, feeling more and more safe with each giggle or snicker she let out. This could have been a lot worse, obviously. Thankfully, Miranda Gordon seemed to be easily amused by shenanigans.

"That poor girl," Miranda sighed finally, resuming walking. "Maybe one day I'll ask you both to tell me the entire story. Once again, Jonathon need not know. I'm just amazed Jordan managed to keep the gruesome details of the wine cellar holocaust from him."

"There are so many things about that weekend your husband never needs to find out, ma'am," Mike said. "For all of our sakes and collective sanity. I'll bribe you with kilotons of northern Ontario pheasant, if necessary."

"I'll consider it, sir, but your continued presence is worth a lot more than any old bird," Miranda said pleasantly as they walked. "Just let me know what I need to do to ensure that."

At that time, he hadn't understood what he was meant to infer from that statement.

***

Blackwell Manor, Wednesday night, the present, a room in the basement...

Alex sighed heavily as he slogged through yet another formatting bundle, having popped a fourth VHS cassette into the machine that read them and put the video feed on his screen. At this point, seeing gonzo shots of his dad's dick stretching his mom's pussy was just wearying for the most part.

Note to self, never troll members of the clergy, he muttered inside his head.

This was (hopefully) his last tape tonight, and as desperate as he was to finish the project, he knew better than to half-ass it. He had despaired when he saw the quality and capabilities of the equipment his father had imported for the project. The intent was clearly that Alex was to take loads of homemade eighties and nineties porn and convert it into HD quality of astonishing clarity.

"Well, I sure didn't need to know that Aunt Mona could do that," he grumbled aloud as he watched the screen, adjusting the colour and saturation levels as the scene progressed wetly. A couple of more seconds and he winced. He'd never heard her make a noise like that before.

No, there was no sense in rushing, since if the finished product didn't pass muster, he'd just be told to start from square one. He'd push through this particular tape and then call it a night. No doubt his father expected a certain percentage of all this debauchery to be ready in time for his wife's birthday in August.

Alex was resting his chin on his hand and tapping a finger against the desk while he watched the screen. He now knew all his aunts, even Lisa, in ways he'd never anticipated. Not that he'd wanted to, mind, but clearly they'd been involved in these shenanigans since they all-

"Alex..."

He yelped and jumped to his feet, spinning around to see his mother standing there. His eyes were wide and his heart was like a jackhammer in his chest. Karen was looking at him passively, wearing a pencil skirt and silk blouse, her arms folded under her large bust.

"Mom!" he gasped, his hand fumbling behind him for the mouse on the desk, his eyes still the size of dinner plates. "I can explain..."

Karen held up a hand. "At ease, child, you're supposed to be looking at all this pornography, yes? Your father and I indentured you to do it, you may recall."

"Oh... right..." he breathed, wiping at his forehead with the hand that wasn't supporting him in leaning back against the desk. "Yeah... I... what're you doing here?"

"I came down to see how you were progressing," she said simply, gesturing for him to sit and continue with what he was doing. Alex sagged into the chair he'd leapt out of and returned his attention to the screen. He'd need to back up about twenty seconds, since his mother had given him a heart attack, which was no excuse for gaps in quality. "You have been down here for nearly three hours, since dinner ended, and I thought you might need some refreshments."

She looked at the screen, where Janet was getting railed by Mike, and smirked. "Or maybe some tissues."

"Harrrrrr..." Alex grumbled, trying his best to ignore his troll of a mother, now standing beside him. "I'd settle for bleach for my eyes, or a decade of therapy."

"Oh, as if you haven't seen your father and I in compromising positions like this before," she said dismissively, with a small wave. "It's not like you were ever doing the filming, child."

"Might as well be, at this point," he mumbled, pausing the video feed and adjusting the colours and contrast. It was harder to work on the sound, but damned if his father hadn't found some excellent mixing programs. "This is my fourth one tonight."

"Which means you're likely one fifth of a percent toward finishing, well done," Karen said encouragingly, patting her son on the shoulder while she looked at the screen intently. Alex resumed playing, trying not to think about what was playing in front of him. This was proving more difficult than he wanted, of course. Gratuitous sex had that effect on, well, everyone, didn't it?

"Ah, I remember this," Karen said, nodding and tapping a fingernail against his shoulder, as if he should pay attention to what she was saying or even wanted to know. "February of eighty-nine. Your aunts had come for a visit while your father and I were getting ready to go to Petawawa. I know it was that time because of how your Aunt Mona is wearing her hair."

"Whoopee..." Alex sighed. Mona had taken over the camera moments before, and was now filming Janet getting skewered by his father, while his mother was lying on top of Aunt Lisa and next to his dad and Janet, the two of them making out and squirming their pussies together.

"Yeah, Li!" he heard his Aunt Mona say eagerly as the camera got closer, zooming in on his mother's and aunt's womanhoods slithering wetly. "Gimme a good look inside Princess!"

Alex squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as one of Lisa's hands squeezed down between their grinding forms and her dainty fingers found Karen's pussylips and spread them, revealing her squelching depths.

"Oh!" Karen protested from beside him, making Alex look at her. She was frowning at the screen and looking indignant. "Has the quality of these tapes degraded that much, or was it really that poor to begin with?"

What on earth was she on about?

She reached down and hit the 'Pause' key, stopping the playback. The screen was frozen on a gonzo closeup of his mother's vag, spread wide by Lisa's fingers still. He may not have wanted to be looking, but Alex kept his eyes trained on the screen, knowing that somehow this was for 'his' benefit.

"I am much pinker than that on the inside!" she snapped, her voice tinged with something akin to indignation while she almost flung her finger at the screen. "So much more pink. I almost look brownish there. I have a lovely bubblegum pink interior, thank you!"

Before he could say anything, his mother was bending over and sliding her panties down her legs, skinning them off before placing one foot up on the table and starting to hike up her skirt. "Look, that way you can adjust the colour to its proper shade."

"MOM!!!" Alex howled before leaping up and tearing out of the room in panic. Barely two seconds had passed before she could hear him blasting open the door at the end of the hallway and charging upstairs.

Karen put her foot down on the floor and leaned back against the desk, her eyes shining with mirth as she giggled to herself before she saved his work and shut the system down for the night.

"Too easy," she sighed in satisfaction before exiting the room, twirling her tiny panties around her finger.

***

A certain 'office', Thursday morning, 1987...

"Thank you for coming, sir," Mike said as he gestured for Jonathon Blackwell to enter the room. The patriarch did so, followed by his daughter and her three friends. He entered last. The small space was now crowded, but they all still fit somehow. Mike ignored Janet taking the opportunity to press her ass back against him. "I was looking forward to showing you my setup."

"My Kitten was most insistent I come to see, after she told me about it," Jonathon said, looking around.

"Well, she kinda griped about it, rather than told him, not gonna lie," Mona added, earning her a look from Karen. "It sounded like she was tattling on you, really."

"She said you call this a 'Dayraven Cluster'," Karen's father mused, studying the banks of computers on the walls. "After the Frankish hero from Beowulf, I assume."

"Yes, sir," Mike confirmed, nodding. "Despite his rather gruesome end, I'm partial to the sound of the name."

He gestured to a particular tower sitting on one of the desks. "Please go ahead, sir."

Jonathon nodded and pressed on a button, causing the whole assembly spread around the room to hum to life. Lisa managed to stay in place, despite her wariness of miles of cabling lashing out to bind her limbs and then rape her. The screens blinked on, and the television intro song filled the room. Jonathon looked at his daughter and raised an eyebrow.

"I told you, father, he is a gigantic nerd," Karen sighed, shaking her head. She had hoped Mike might disable or at least mute the Airwolf theme. No such luck, clearly. Her father was in for the full, unrelenting weight of DeBourne's geekdom.

"The strange little models are a nice touch, though," Jonathon mused, looking at the Danguard Ace figurine. "From Japan, yes?"

"Yessir," Mike confirmed, strangely pleased that Gordon's father knew that detail at all. It was rather niche, of course. "Go ahead and take a seat, and see what you think. Just don't hit the F12 key, or you'll start up a Abelian sandpile process I'm not ready to delineate yet."

Karen's father sat in the chair, which was rather overlarge even for him, since it was meant to accommodate DeBourne. He looked at the screens across the desks with interest, taking in what they were showing him. "You've linked them all in a Unix-style system, I see."

"Yes," the giant student said, nodding. "Because the software they use is similar but not universal, lots of tweaking was necessary to get them to talk to one another. On the plus side, I've managed some efficiency because of the lack of redundancy, and the temperatures they run at are surprisingly low. I was telling your daughter that I'm averaging about 980K of memory for my processes."

"Impressive," Jonathan said, using a mouse to click through the performance files and noting how they interacted. It was like watching Germans, Dutch, Luxembourgers, and Afrikaners speaking with one another, the benefit being that there was a strong common bond, but not a saturation of people speaking just German. In a sense, they had things to teach one another and adapt. Brilliant. "How much of the memory is dedicated to communication between the drives, as opposed to calculations for your projects?"

"I haven't quite finished the ratio equalizing yet, admittedly, but on average about three percent is dedicated to communication," Mike explained. "The more intensive the calculations, though, the more memory and processing power is pulled away from communication, so that aspect slows down. With the limitations of my equipment, there's only so fast it can get. It can be erratic in speed if I'm not holding its hand, so to speak, feeding in my calculations at certain intervals."

"Still, nearly one megabyte is quite astonishing," the patriarch said, still looking at the intercommunication between the drives. He had entire departments of programmers and engineers doing this sort of thing. The rig itself was a nightmare, but it worked. It worked very well. "It would be interesting to see what you could do with modern drives."