Chapter 45

Terri’s turn:

I really need to pay attention. Sometimes I just sort of take things for granted in my life with all the other people around.

It’s not my sisters. We’re almost telepathic with each other. It’s not my aunts or uncles or Dad or Tina-mom.

It’s Jerry.

You see, I had a talk with Dad and Tina about Jerry. Yes, he’s a good fledgling engineer, as Cindy calls him. That’s not the problem. I think Jerry’s The One. He reminds me of Dad in all the good ways – smart, good looking, kind, patient, ever so capable. I really LIKE him.

Everybody cautioned me about the dangers, so I decided to sort of distance myself from Jerry.

Today I was looking at some programming with Vivek. I’ve known Vivek longer than Jerry, and Vivek is sort of my go-to guy for programming, so we were at the whiteboard, talking, laughing, because the things we do are just FUN. And I looked over and caught Jerry looking at me. ME!

Maybe I pulled back a little too much. Of all the people I know, I DON’T want to hurt Jerry. Even if we decide we’re NOT meant for each other, I don’t want him unhappy. It’s a genuine quandary. We all – me, Dad, Tina, Jerry, EVERYBODY – know that there’s no way that Jerry and I can be together, especially since I only have a vague idea of what ‘together’ means. I know that married couples spend quite a bit of time alone together. I see all the black ‘private time’ blocks on the community calendar. I know that Jerry and I – we don’t get those blocks.

Tina very gently had The Talk with me, at least part of it. I suspect that there’s MUCH more. I see a big part of it sitting on Tina’s lap every evening and on Saturday we have a regular baby-fest with little Kathy – I’m thinking ‘Kat’ works – and JW and Stoney 2.0 (that’s MINE! I started it. It seems to be sticking) and Elise. That’s practical biology at work and I’ve been through that whole gamete game. I also listen to some less responsible teens in my home-school group and some of the conversations of college students and I know that the sex thing is a big attraction. I also know it’s like lush green grass over a minefield.

Yes, it’s me, in soliloquy mode. Make that the southern-approved Faulknerian ‘stream of consciousness’ soliloquy mode, as explained by Mizz Lee. Language arts teacher extraordinaire.

Jerry looks sad. Oh, what to do...

I finished the conversation with Vivek, right up to us both snapping shots of the whiteboard to add to our notes. Vivek’s going to get a couple of people to work coding the blocks we’ve drawn. I’m free.

I walk over to where Jerry’s sketching. He’s talking about lightening up some of the components that we’ve been using that are aluminum now. We’re thinking carbon fiber. He’s concentrating on his sketch and doesn’t see me walk up behind him in his corner.

Brave me. I just get really close and bump into him just a little bit, like it could be an accident.

“Whatcha doin, Jerry?” I ask.

The bump startled him. He turned towards me. “Hi, Terri. I thought you ‘n’ Vivek were working together today.”

“We WORK together,” I said, slightly and deliberately emphasizing ‘work’. “What are you and I working on?” I almost said ‘together’, but what’s an eleven year old girl know about ‘together’, right? This time I bumped him and made it seem a little bit MORE like it was on purpose.

“What we talked about last week,” he said. He looked at me kind of funny. “I’m trying to see what I can do to get the mass off the limbs without having a lot of external parts.”

“We want the exoskeleton to be a real exoskeleton,” I said. “You said that meant that the muscles...”

“The motive power,” he injected, “will be internal to the limbs. No pushrods or cables or things like that.”

“Like an ant, right?”

“An ant wearing roller skates with tracks on them. I can’t get the mass off the tracks, though...”

I smiled, a little on the outside, a whole lot more on the inside. Cindy’s line – “I love it when you talk technical.” That’s what I said to him.

He looked at me, smiling back. It might be all the ‘love’ I’m supposed to talk about right now.

“We do well, don’t we?” he told me.

“Yep-hmmm,” I said. “So when are we gonna build a set?”

“Maybe by next week. One limb. Mock up the mobility, see how it handles stresses. I’m going ‘fork and eye’ to keep the initial forces balanced.”

“It’ll have enough stress from its environment without starting off with offset loading.”

He grinned. That’s what I mean. “What’d you do to make your eyes so blue today?”

I know what Tina means by ‘melting’.

“Oh, stoppit!” I giggled. “This is a workplace!”

And he knows what I mean. Exactly what I mean.

I go looking for Nikki. Cindy’s on another flying binge this afternoon, Mister Wally’s working on her for her instrument rating.

“You look happier,” Nikki said when I turned the corner into her office. “What gives?”

“Can I close the door?”

“Sure.”

“I’m gonna talk with Dad ‘n’ Tina ‘bout this, but since you’re here...” and I told her about me and Jerry.

“Just be very careful, Terri. I don’t have to tell you...”

“I know. But I felt like there was something in my stomach ... and when I was talking to Vivek and I saw Jerry’s face, I knew that I’m not handling this correctly.”

“He made a face at you?” Nikki asked.

“Noooo,” I said. “He just looked kinda hurt, maybe like ... I dunno. Just a look. I saw it.”

“What’d you do?”

“I went over and talked to ‘im about the project. I might’ve bumped ‘im just a little bit.”

“D’ya wanna show me how you bumped him?”

I showed Nikki. She smiled, hugged me. “Baby ... Be really careful. You’re dealing with hearts here, yours and his. You’re awfully young.” She paused. “And don’t even think about arguing. And Jerry’s a real, live human being. Neither of you needs to hurt the other. And that’s just your emotional well-being. There’s legal ... and there’s all kinds of crap that can fall out.”

“I just want ‘im to smile.”

“You go be the pTerridactyl around him. That’s what got him smiling in the first place.”

“I’ll do that.”

“And make sure you talk to your dad and Tina, okay? I think that’s best.”

“I will.”

Dana’s turn:

Sometimes you just KNOW when something’s wrong, even if you can’t really figure out what it is. But I’ve noticed that, since Karen came out to visit, Vicki has been a little quieter, and not smiling as much.

I got a little worried when I got her text, saying “Got a minute?” I sent back, “Come on over”, and put my engineering text down. I don’t know why Vicki seems to gravitate to me for some things. Kim is, for all intents and purposes, Vicki’s mom. I’m the newbie here. Oh well, it’s another person who CARES, and I get to care right back.

And about two seconds later, I heard the little knock on the door.

“Come on in, Vicki.”

“Dana, can we talk for a minute?”

“Sure, Vicki, what’s on your mind?”

“Dana, am I weird?”

“Yup, pretty weird, I’d say. But aren’t we all, around here?”

“That’s not what I mean, Dana. The thing is, when Mom was out here, she kept looking at me like I had an extra head, or something. And the other kids in the home school group are doing it, too.”

“Vicki, you have to understand that ‘smart’ is weird to a lot of people. You Munchkins are learning things and doing things that few people can do when they’re twice your age, and most people, like Karen, just never figure it out at all. Nothing wrong with your Mom, but she simply cannot understand.”

“But Dana, the only two places I feel “normal” are over at the campus, and here with the community, with my sisters. Why is that?”

I said, “Vicki, we’re back to that ‘smart’ thing, again. When you’re in a college class, you’re being challenged, and learning the things that are interesting to you. And in the lab with the Munchkins, you’re actually DOING things that are interesting to you – ‘doing’ is learning with your hands, really.”

“Thank you, Dana. And that brings me to my next question. Is the community magical, like Hogwarts?”

I said, “Vicki, I’ve been certain of that since the day we got here. I doubt that there’s anything like this anywhere else. But the ‘magic’ isn’t the kind of stuff that comes from being a wizard, or anything. It’s because you’re ALWAYS around people that are as smart as you are, and are interested in the same things. When you’re working with them, studying with them, arguing with them, you’re all learning at the same time. It’s accelerated, compared to the rest of the world. But here, it just seems normal.”

To my relief, a giggle. “Dana, we’ve been talking about putting a sign on the lab door. We think it should say ‘Hogwarts -- Technology Division’, or something like that.”

“Go ahead and do it, Vicki. Lots of people will laugh, for a while. And then they’ll begin to believe it.”

She put her arms around me. “Thank you. You make me feel good. I got lots of sisters and aunts, but you’re special.”

“Thank you, baby,” I said.

“How’s studying working for you? We haven’t talked lately.”

“The book’s almost as big as me,” I sighed. “This is engineering. That one over there, it’s math, but I’ll probably skim it and test out. I actually have READ that history book.”

I guess it’s Vicki’s time for payback. “But you get to learn it as fast as you CAN, not as fast as the rest of the class can.” Then she grinned, rolled those blue eyes and giggled. “Heyyyyyyyy! See what you did?”

“What’d I do?”

“You taught ME something, then I turned right around and used it on YOU!”

“You sure Kim ‘n’ your dad ain’t gonna put you up for adoption?”

Giggle. “I have a sixteen year old mom. If you an’ Ed adopt me, you’re fifteen. If this keeps on, I’m getting adopted by Terri ‘n’ Rachel.”

“That’s all very complex,” I said. “I’m your aunt and your big sister and a surrogate mom and...”

“Best friend. Tied for first place with EVERYBODY! So what’s the history book about?”

“History of Europe since 1900.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Wars. International intrigue. World War I was like Game of Thrones with machine guns and airplanes.”

“They do NOT let you watch that show...”

Giggle. “Book’s on my iPad.”

“Vicki...”

“Oh, I know you’ll tell Dad or Kim. Go ahead. It’s a book. Words. Terri was telling me some of the stuff she’s read.”

“Like what?”

“She said her dad almost had heart failure over some of ‘em. Brave New World. 1984. Exodus.”

“I’m not familiar. What do YOU know?”

I got a second-hand synopsis, scribbled notes. I need to read more. The synopsis wasn’t anything like ‘See spot run.’

That evening I asked Ed about the reading list.

“Classics of literature, at least the first two. Exodus, maybe not so much. I wouldn’t say any of them are anything near what they call ‘young adult’ fiction.”

I sort of smirked at him. “I guess I’m too immature an’ tender to read stuff like that, huh?” I shouldn’t do that to him, because while I was talking I was stepping out of my jeans.

“You are so absolutely, horribly BAD!” he grinned.

“Wanna send me back?”