Chapter 44

Nikki’s turn:

Cindy’s on her way back. Dan’s flying with her, most likely in the right seat, because Cindy’s racking up hours for her commercial license.

Me? Glad to have her back. We’re a community of pilots. We rack up a pretty good number of hours as we travel back and forth for home and work and yes, just for the pure joy of flying. Dan and I have a neat little plane for the two of us to travel in, and if we need more, we can borrow one of the bigger, although slower, ones. Right now, our plane is being flown back from Kansas by Jason, and for the first time he’s not the fastest one in the air, although I imagine that Cindy’s pulled the throttles back in that twin, letting Jason keep up with her and her Dan.

There it is again – a flutter in my midsection. Tina says it could be the baby, a little on the early side, but I can’t be sure, not with all the conniptions this pregnancy thing has caused my stomach.

Gracelyn is one of our students, a participant in the project the Munchkins are working on in our Auburn group. I guess she noted my discomfort, although I try to hide it.

“Doctor Granger...”

“Stop that, Gracie,” I tell her. “It’s an accomplishment, I’m over it, let’s move on with life.”

“Okay, then, Nikki ... you know some of those other...”

“The other faculty members have their issues. I have my own. What’s up?”

“You, apparently. Stomach again?”

“I dunno ... sort of quivery...”

“Could be the baby.”

“Either the little thing’s doing it through my hormones or he just decided to take the direct route.”

“How long?”

“Fourteen weeks, maybe.”

“Uh, google it. Sounds about the time...”

“And you know this because?”

She straightened her back. “Because I’m YOUR student and you culled out all the dumb ones,” she snapped.

“I was only PART of the process,” I said truthfully. “I screened. You’ve been selected by the Munchkins.”

“Oh, yes ... our own version of Lyanna Mormont.”

“Huh?”

“Lyanna Mormont of Bear Island. From Game of Thrones. She’s, like, eleven, and the queen of her own little kingdom and she’s very capable and precocious.”

“I haven’t gotten into that show,” I answered.

“If you want, I’ll send you a link to a YouTube clip.”

“Okay ... let’s go into my office. I gotta see somebody you compare Terri to...”

We started watching the clip. “Terri’s not nearly that tactless,” I said.

“Yeah, I know ... We ALL know. Terri’s a complete little doll. They ALL are. But this Lyanna – she’s in charge. Confident. Knows her business. Soooo...”

“You know Tina’s gonna hear about this.”

Gracie smiled. “I’ve talked with Tina. She’s as amazed as I am.”

“We all are. So what path does she have you taking now?”

“Me an’ one of the mechanical guys. She says that since Bot-bot has evolved for four tracks, it should be an easy step to try a hybrid – four tracks that act as feet in a quadruped mode, and that if we can do THAT, then we can do failure modes where we can keep almost full agility with three mobility units, or some capability with two mobility units as long as they’re on opposite sides.”

“Like the way he climbs stairs and curbs...”

“Yeah. We lengthen the limbs, put more power into the articulator motors, and...”

“Software out the kazoo,” I finished.

“Yeah-huh,” she said. “You know, me ‘n’ Stefan, we were wondering about the reasons we were looking at full feedback loops on every stinkin’ joint on Bot-bot’s mobility unit. We didn’t need that until we started talking about making him smart enough to recognize terrain with his feet, and now, whether his limbs are working.”

“Do you think that Terri had that in mind?”

“I dunno if it’s just Terri, but they seem to have some path to a goal that probably involves world domination, and it’ll involve Bot-bot playing that goofy ‘River Kwai’ march on the way there.”

“That’s a picture,” I said.

“That Major Roth...”

“Ken?”

“Yeah ... Ken. He says he wants five hundred of ‘em.”

“That’s scary...” I started. “Who does he propose to build these things?”

“I dunno,” Gracie said. “Raytheon. General Dynamics. One of those big defense contractors.” She paused. “Your stomach. Have you tried ginger ale?”

“The ginger ale in the fridge is mine. How do you know about ginger ale and babies kicking?”

“Older sister.”

“And you watched.”

“Sure, I did. She was a happy pregnant woman, kinda like your friends Tina an’ Susan. And my sister...”

“Those two are my sisters, as well.”

“Stoppit! You’re makin’ me miss my sister.”

“Come out on Friday or Saturday evening. I’ll be glad to loan you mine,” I said.

“I’ve heard about all those wild soirees you guys throw. I might do that.”

“Bring Stefan.”

Her face reddened. She squeaked “Stoppiiiiiit!”

“Or not.” I watched her eyes. I know Stefan’s a co-worker and he’s bound to show up in conversation on the odd interval. However, I think that with Gracie, it’s a little more often than expected and there’s a tinge of brightening of her countenance, as Terri says.

“What’re you telling Nikki to stop?” Vicki said as she appeared around the edge of the door.

“I’m tellin’ Nikki to stop talking about me and Stefan.”

“Stefan’s neat,” Vicki said. “I like his ideas about plastic bearings for the limbs.” That was one of the things that our counterparts in the traditional engineering path praised us for – we got our students away from formulae and into real-world applications – what was already out there and how best to use it.

“Yeah...” I inserted. “That’s a neat thing about Stefan. I’m sure...”

“Oh, you’re talking about boy-girl stuff, huh?”

Now Gracie really turned red. Vicki noticed. “Oh,” she said. “Okay. Not my business. I should not interrupt.”

“Vicki, you’re not interrupting anything at all. We’re talking about the mobility changes. We got sidetracked,” Gracie said.

“That’s because work is going well,” Vicki said. “Kim says when work is going well and you like who you’re working with, life is very good.”

“Kim is a wise lady,” I said. Gracie wheeled away, off into the bowels of our little lab.

“She’s my mom. That makes me happy. She’s got me here. That makes me happy. I’m happier here than I ever was. I miss my mom in California, but I’m glad I’m here. Life is complicated, but this is the best place to handle that.”

“You’ve been thinking, Vicki. Something bothering you?”

“No. Yeah. How is it that part of life can be so simple and good and easy to understand and other parts are not so simple and sometimes they make you feel bad?”

‘C’mere,” I said, opening my arms. She came for the hug. “Everybody hurts sometimes, baby. I still hurt about my mom. Tina still hurts about hers. People have regrets and wish they didn’t say things that hurt people and feel bad when others hurt and they can’t help.”

“And you see me and you CAN help,” Vicki said.

“Everybody wants to help you, Vicki. Are you getting pushed too hard? We can slow down.”

“Nooo.” Then, “Yeah, maybe ... I’m almost caught up. Sometimes I feel stupid, though.”

“My dear, dear Victoria,” I said softly. Her name really IS Vicki, not Victoria, but I do that because she smiles when I do. Vicki’s smile is reason enough. “You’re supposed to be in elementary school, struggling with your multiplication table. Instead, you’ve pretty much mastered high school algebra, you’re beating around the edges of trig and calculus. Mizz Lee LIKES your language skills. ‘Stupid’ isn’t what you are. Not at all.” I paused. “Did somebody say something?”

“No. I just get the feeling...”

“Baby,” I said, “I still get the feeling that maybe I’m not what those diplomas over on the wall SAY I am. I think that’s normal...”

“So if it happens to you ‘n’ me, it’s normal?”

I giggled at this direction of thought. “We get to say that. I’m Doctor Nikki and you’re the Wonder-Vicki, right?” The name came from one of the teens in the home-school group.

Yes, occasionally we get one or two of ‘em into the vicinity of some of our work. Some of the home-school group’s other parents think we’re absolutely nuts, though, but the Munchkins have been involved going on three years now and the news is definitely out.

Sadly we had snakes in our paradise. Word of the lively learning environment, the fact that real experience with real-world companies was gained, credits for work in cutting edge technologies, all these meant that we had quite a few students desiring admission. The sad part is we didn’t have the room.

Telling somebody they CAN’T do something in this day and age is a minefield. We tiptoed through the mines. First, we sort of got some of the professors to do our screening. If one of the students was interested and he talked with a professor first, the professor could contact us for discussion. A 3.9-plus GPA, at least in math and engineering or hard science, was almost a requisite. We’d get the referral.

We also got participants who came to us directly. That’s a bit harder, but we still send ‘em through their professors. Let the college take the heat. The only ones we didn’t subject to this scrutiny were those who we ‘grandfathered’ in before we gained ‘official’ status. Jerry Stengall and Vivek Gupta fell into that category.

When we explained come of this, Vivek was beside himself. “I am grandfather? My mother shall be very surprised.”

“GrandfatherED,” Cindy laughed.

“Not when I tell my mother,” he countered.

I watched through my door into the lab. Three centers of activity were going – Vicki and a couple of students were re-assembling the mobility unit. Terri and Vivek were at a whiteboard in a muted but still animated conversation over programming the new mobility features, and Rachel was with Jerry working on something on the mechanical bench.

I love this place.

I also love knowing that at this moment my friends are flying back from Kansas and I am quite honestly torn because I’m trying to figure out if I can squeeze a week to get that multi-engine rating in before I get too big to fit behind the control yoke of a plane. I’m just barely starting to show now and there’s so much going on in my life.

Dan’s in for whatever, though. Pregnant? He had to be on board. I mean, when we first married, he had a vasectomy. The guy loved me enough to suffer through the reversal. He says it was not that big a deal, but he also said it took longer to recover than the original surgery. We had to make a concerted effort to restart all the plumbing, but we celebrated when we got positive test results, first, his sperm count and second, my pregnancy test.

I’ve gotten plenty of practice with babies, having four of them in the immediate family, not that I was totally unfamiliar before I met Dan. After all, my surroundings were rife with babies there, as well, although I can’t particularly remember any married parents or women who went through pregnancy as happy, as, say, The Radiant Susan. I was asked, coerced, almost forced into babysitting more times than I wanted to think about. I knew about diapers and diarrhea and colic and all sorts of unpleasantness, but I also know about the grins and coos and giggles and this one will be mine and Dan’s.