I found my diary again.  All covered in dust and gunk.  It was
hiding under the bed, where apparently I shoved it and forgot about it. 
Along with a lot of rather weird stuff, that I won't get into.

	I moved out of Amber a several years ago (for me).  Eddie's long
since been turned on and working, and things have been pretty smooth.  I
notice that my last entry was the day before my dad finally up and died,
hopefully this time for good.

	That day, well, sucked.  My wonderful brother and sister made
asses of themselves, Archimedes tried to make shish-kabob of my siblings,
and some guy who I hardly know (and who's only saving grace is that he
drips of Pattern and doesn't know how to cover it up) lopped off my Dad's
head.  It was all very trippy.  (TRAILS!  BEAUTIFUL TRAILS!)

	You know, sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I had a
*normal* family.  Then I figure that all this weirdness just comes with
the Pattern imprint.  Part of the package.

	So, anyway, I had a bad couple of weeks after that.  Your Dad
being beheaded and his soul stuck in a can does that to you.  But I had
Anton, Eddie, and my shrink, and to a lesser degree, my sister, so I got
over it, and went back on living.

	Melanie, unfortunately, never did.

	The funny part, after I got over feeling all guilty and such, was
that for the first time in my LIFE I felt *FREE.*  Free of that psycho and
his weird plans for infinite domination of the universe.  That, and prying
into my life.  I thought about congratulating the Moor who killed him, but
I just figured that he wouldn't much understand.  I just owe him a
spaghetti dinner sometime.

	So, life's been good since then.  I'm happy, I lead a pretty full
and busy life.

MY FAMILY -

	We've grown since I last checked:

	ANTON - my fiance and most important person in my life.  Through
bad times and good these past couple of years.  That, and he makes a mean
cheese tortellini.

	EDDIE - My first child.  He's not actually a child, he's a
machine.  A great big Trump encyclopedia.  And he works so well.  I keep
giving him personas, but he really hasn't developed all of the
intelligence I hoped for.  Well, time will tell.

	MELANIE & MARON - my sister and brother, both of whom I now get
along with.  Maron turned out to be a pretty normal guy, much to my
surprise.  My sister, on the other hand, is a basketcase, complete with
garlic bread.

	LAUGHTER & ULYSSES - My cousins.  Ulysses is all grown up now,
with a family and responsibilities and stuff.  He's like, an adult. 
*shudder* I have sworn to always be a Toys R Us kid.  Laughter is as
usual.  She was pretty bummed for a while there, and I never really found
out why.  I think she was just kind of lonely.  But she's WITH CHILDREN. 
It's funky and weird.  But I love them, so what the heck.

	FIONA & BLEYS - My aunt and uncle.  Somehow I'm going to have to
explain this whole 'I don't like girls' syndrome to them, and I'm not
really looking forward to it.

	MY FELINE FAMILY - Ramesses, Cleo, Patrick, Spook, and Nerf.  My
cats.  Ramesses will always be the king around here (he thinks that we're
his people) but Cleo is my baby.  She's not a kitten any more, but she's
still pretty dumb.

	MY RODENTS - My hamsters: LaPlace, Fourier, and Euler.  Melanie
keeps threatening to feed them to her smelly pack animals.

	And the rest of my friends with whom I hang out with, go clubbing
with, go out on vacation, go to parties, etc.  Special thanks to my AI
DEVELOPMENT GROUP, without whom the EDI OS would never have been possible.

PROJECTS -

	Well, the big project is the DNA Engineered one, but that's a
secret.  :)

	EDDIE is going well right now.  He helps me with the big problem,
removing the multiple Patterns with as little damage as possible.  I have
a theory, and I'm trying to prove it.  I think I have a solution that
might make this possible, but right now it hinges on people not making
things worse than they are.  It's hard, because Amberites want to frag
Patterns, Chaosites want to make Patterns, and each change just makes the
thing more unbalanced.  It's hard.

	Then was the day that I stood staring at the Primal Pattern for no
real good reason, and I stumbled on to THE TRUTH.  It was pretty wild.  I
asked the big D, and sure enough, I was right.  It puts the universe in a
real funky perspective, and I try not to think about it all too hard.  It
makes living Trump kind of moot, though.  I guess Dad, when he invented
it, was looking for Power, not Truth.  Pity.

MELANIE -

	Yes, a section dedicated to my sister.

	My friend Janice (another sexually different individual) once told
me: "You know what the problem with your sister is?  She's too flat
chested.  If she got chest implants she'd feel better, get more men, and
get laid more.  Then she wouldn't be so spooky."

	I don't know what to do any more.  I think I've talked her into
seeing my shrink, but I'm sort of at the end of my rope.  If she doesn't
go see the shrink on a regular basis, I'm going to be forced to move to
plan B, which includes men in white coats.  Anton is afraid of her, people
in Amber don't like her, even sometimes I can't talk to her.

	But I try.  I try very hard.  She has this 'No one loves me I
might as well curl up and die' complex so badly that it's hard to chip
through.

	We had this big fight.  She has the Brand-syndrome - acquiring
power under the guise of 'knowledge' so that no one can ever hurt her
again.  And that just leads to pain and messy ends.

	I'd much rather her be part of my family, be happy, and have a
family of her own.  But sometimes I think she uses me for warmth and
feeling, more than power.  And sometimes I want a life of my own.

MY LIFE -

	That's it.  My life.  I'm the head of a big software corporation
(daVinci Space and Time), and make millions of dollars while I sleep. 
It's lots of fun, and I schmooze with big names.  I'm getting married to a
great guy.  My family grows by the minute. And I'm one with Patterness.

	That, and I *have* a solution.  Okay, it's not great.  It's not
wonderful.  But if we're lucky... it WILL work.  I hope.  No one gets
killed, no one gets hurt, and we're all happy in the end.  And that, I
suppose, is what counts the most.