Chapter 7: The Girls’ Plans

Tuesday morning found Ashley, Mark, Sarah, and Sarah’s mom, Sally, at Woodside High School. They had an appointment with a counselor about taking the California High School Proficiency Examination. This would allow them to attend college the following year. It had taken a bit of talking for Sally to convince the school to set up a meeting for both girls at the same time. The fact that both wanted to discuss the same topic was the only reason they got the double appointment.

Mark carried a chair into Samantha Sizemore’s office. He and Sally were sitting farther back with the two girls upfront since they were going to promote their own requests.

“Mrs. Sizemore, for the record, I’m not yet the legal custodian for Ashley. Per Ashley’s parents’ wills, her Aunt Ruth has a higher priority for custodianship, but she is in agreement with Ashley’s wishes. She will present this position at a custody hearing on Thursday. We should have the paperwork on Friday.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, since what you are asking for is something which will take a while to arrange. Mrs. Pierce had mentioned that both Sarah and Ashley want to take the California High School Proficiency Examination with the intention of attending Stanford next year. Now both of them have excellent grades and have participated in other school activities, but even their perfect grades don’t mean they will be able to skip three years of high school.”

“Ashley and I have been holding back. We wanted to be with everyone else and enjoy school. Things have changed over the last few weeks, and we have things we need to do. My intention is to get into medical school before I am twenty.” Sarah nodded to Ash.

“I will study business and engineering, which will help in running the family business.” Ash saw the incomprehension in Mrs. Sizemore’s expression. “Between Grandpa and me, we are the sole owners of MSI. Len Smith will do a good job as CEO, but we have a number of new directions we are planning to go. That’s the why, but what we have to do is convince you and whomever else we need to get approval that we have the ability and learning necessary. Also, that we can handle the changes in our life this would entail. Where would you like to start?”

“You expect Ashley to run MSI? Isn’t that a lot to expect from a young girl who just lost most of her family?”

“She won’t be running MSI but will be on the board of directors, as will Sarah. I will be showing them how to run a company. I’m expecting a lot from Ashley and Sarah, but they both have the ability to do this or anything else they want to. We will be adding more board members and making other changes in how the company is run, but the three of us will be doing most of the planning.” Mark saw Sally wanted to comment.

“My husband and I had known Sarah hadn’t been putting a lot of effort into school, but with her grades, how could we complain? She was doing a lot of reading and studying on her own. We didn’t realize how much, though.”

“Sarah, can you fill me in on what you have accomplished on your own?”

“I have been reading papers and websites on medical and other topics on the internet. To do that, I learned to read Latin, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese besides the French I was taking in school. I also speak French, Spanish, and Russian. Now that we are working for MSI, we have the money to pay for research papers which are behind pay walls. Mr. Sawyer told us MSI would pay for them so it doesn’t have to come out of our pay. We have also picked up computer skills. Programming, data mining, computer access, and other useful abilities.”

“Computer access?”

“Both of them can access records from most systems from their phones, but they do even better with the right computer equipment.” Mark also didn’t use the term hacking.

“But that’s illegal.”

“They have offers from both the FBI and Naval Intelligence to do work for them.”

“We are assisting in finding the people who bombed the plane. They have most of them in custody.” Ashley’s expression when she mentioned the bombing made Mrs. Sizemore sit back. She had seen similar looks on JDs.

“One of the projects we will be starting will be ensuring the world does not get surprised as it did when the North Koreans attacked. Not directly ourselves but facilitating that governments have what is necessary to discover such threats so they can be stopped.” Mark did realize what they were providing could also allow governments to oppress people. They would have to consider ways to ensure the governments didn’t abuse it. He looked at the girls. Had the girls considered that or did you need to be older to be that paranoid? “We are getting off topic again, but you can see what is driving the girls is the loss of innocence recent events have left them with.”

“Yes, the why is interesting, especially since it appears they have been positively affected. Ashley, what languages have you learned?”

“Mostly the same, but I didn’t have the tutoring in Russian Sarah had. I should have German in a few weeks. We will be learning to speak Mandarin. We have studied mathematics and science beyond the high school courses. We expect to have no problem with either the Mathematics or English language sections of CHSPE.”

Mrs. Sizemore checked their records. “I’ll have to check with Mrs. Caldwell about your English language skills, but I see no reason you should not take the test. You’ll have to wait until the spring to take it.”

“That’s OK. Mr. Caldwell is expecting us to try out for the fall play. We also have cheerleading practice this afternoon. We plan to enjoy our last year in school.” Sarah handed two envelopes to Mrs. Sizemore. “Letters of recommendation from Mrs. Caldwell.”

She laughed as she took the envelopes.

Mark shook Len’s hand as he entered Mark’s office. He shut the door, then gestured for Len to take a seat at the table by the window. “This morning I went with Ashley to Woodside High. She and Sarah plan to take the California High School Proficiency exam so they can attend Stanford next year. I will need to talk to a few people to help them with the early admission.”

“Teresa’s husband, Leonard, is a biology professor there. I will talk with her about how he might be able to help.”

“I don’t want to impose on our people.”

“Nonsense. Teresa has a whole list of things she wants Sarah to look at. Since she found out Ashley had similar abilities, she has been going around with a big grin on her face. Everyone was very happy to hear there was another Sawyer to take over from you. I haven’t been telling people about you growing younger. You look ten years younger than when I saw you before you went to Hawaii.”

“Well, they won’t have to wait long for Ashley to be in charge. I just talked to Robert Jacobson, Ashley’s uncle, who is the personal attorney for the family. After all the paperwork is completed, Ashley will have control of the majority of the MSI stock. All my kids and their children’s stock will go to her. All I own will be what Carol and I had.”

“You will be her guardian until she is of age.”

“Maybe, her Aunt Ruth is in line to be her guardian, but both Ruth and Ashley want me to be Ashley’s guardian. There is a hearing on Thursday to make that official. Ashley, Sarah, and I were discussing how we wanted to set things up. You definitely will be in charge of MSI. We see no reason to spend more time than you need us working with MSI. We now have three projects that we will be starting.”

“What is the third project?”

“Take a look at the three objects on the table. Tell me what you think of them.”

Len had wondered about the knife, necklace, and green jewel on the table. He picked up the knife first. “A crude knife made out of a piece of titanium. It has gotten a lot of wear.” He then picked up the necklace. “A magnifying lens used as the pendant for a necklace. The lens has a few small scratches, but the necklace itself was copper, which is much corroded.” When Len picked up the green jewel, he was surprised. It felt cool like it was made of metal. As he looked closely at it, he could see no scratches. He rolled it around the table. It appeared to be a perfect sphere. He held it up to his eye. He couldn’t see any flaws in it. “That is a very expensive gem. Is it emerald?”

Mark handed Len a metal file. “Try and scratch it.”

Len saw Mark was serious. He took the file and tried to put a small mark on the gem. When he didn’t mark it, he tried harder. All he accomplished was some metal dust on the table. “It must be as hard as a diamond.” Len looked at Mark for an answer.

“Much harder. I want to have the knife blade, the lens, and the ball bearing analyzed by our people in-house. Do not take them to a testing lab. If we need some special equipment, rent, borrow, or buy it. Treat this as if it were top secret, but don’t involve the government in it. In fact, don’t use any of the supplied government equipment. Set up a charge number to bill the cost back to me directly. Make that for people, material, overhead, and anything else to keep it from impacting MSI financially. In other words, treat it like outside work. This is the third project we will be setting up.”