Chapter 4

Tina's turn:

I keep telling myself that Bot-bot is not a real pet. I only wish I knew what was going on in my little girl's mind.

Parse that statement, won't you? I have a stepdaughter who's ten years younger than me, who is probably past me in some ways, academically speaking. I know she does things with technology that all of us in the community wonder about.

What went on in her head that caused her to take a mobile squirrel repeller platform and convert it into a pet? Yeah, I know, Sony had that robotic dog, Aibo, but Aibo was to Bot-bot as an amoeba is to an octopus.

Alan tried to stop her and the rest of us from posting movie clips on YouTube, but we did anyway.

So I'm in the office, my chair pulled up beside Alan's looking at the computer monitor when I heard the phone ring up at the front desk. Maddie's on duty today because Beck's off making sure our daughters are getting a rounded view of the world.

"3Sigma Engineering. This is Maddie. Can I help you?" Pause. "No, Terri is not on the staff here." Pause. "Because she's almost eleven, that's why." Pause. "If you wish, I can put you through to her dad and mom. They're in the office today." Pause.

Alan's phone rang. He punched the button to put us on speaker. "Alan Addison. How can I help you?"

"Uh, Mister Addison, I'm Randip Prakesh with Google..."

Alan's jaw quivered.

"I'd like to talk with Terri Addison."

His jaw dropped. "Uh ... you do know that she's eleven years old."

"I do know that I and my team are interested in what they have seen on YouTube," he said. "You work for an engineering firm..."

"I'm one of the owners," Alan said.

"I must ask. Please do not take offense, but is that robot truly your daughter's work?"

"Uh, Mister Prakesh, if this was a regular company, she'd be the one at the whiteboard in the conference room drawing out all the blocks, letting the rest of the team buy in, then she'd pick out blocks for her own work. Yes, it's HER work. She has the backing of some fine minds here in our firm as well as some very capable students from the local university."

"Her video shows an amazing amount of autonomy, Mister Addison. That is what has piqued our interest. What does she do for computing power?"

I knew this one. "Mister Prakesh, I'm Tina Addison, Terri's step-mom. She used distributed micro-controllers for mobility functions. Said that's what a library book said about large dinosaurs, they had two brains..."

"Actually, it was likely a mass of ganglia," he said.

"That's what SHE said, but that it took the housekeeping functions and processing times out of the load for the central processing unit..."

"She said that?"

"Yes," Alan and I answered simultaneously.

I continued. "She said it's like having computing power in the car's engine compartment to handle the automotive functions, and a separate intelligent device in the driver's seat."

"Hah!" he said. "She is getting where we have been. Has she read..."

"We have no idea WHAT she's read, Mister Prakesh. She's perfectly capable of taking the germ of an idea and going off on her own path."

That's why this morning Beck and I have made sure that Terri and Rachel are both dressed like you'd imagine two eleven year old research engineers would be. At nine o'clock, they're meeting with a couple of engineers from Google.

"Sim's nuts," Beck said as we surveyed our daughters. "He said he made it all the way through college and NOBODY ever called asking about his work."

"He didn't put videos on YouTube," I replied.

"Mom, they didn't have YouTube when Dad was in college," Rachel said.

"No," Beck replied, "And even if they had, nothing he did would make a good video."

"Dad is smart on different things."

My Terri nodded assent. "Uh-huh. People are a whole lot more difficult to deal with than programming and hardware an' stuff."

"Just remember, pTerri-dactyls do NOT agree to move to California," I told her amid giggles.

"Same to you, Rachel, my Child," Beck said. "I caught enough guff from your grandmother for following my husband to Alabama. I can only imagine the things she would say if we have to follow our daughter to California."

"They want Terri," Rachel said. "I'm her minion."

I knew better. I know that when the community first formed, it was obvious that Terri was ahead of Rachel in mental abilities. Now I sometimes wonder. Maybe they've formed a two-element 'hive mind', but little escaped the snares they both put up.

Bot-bot was following the four of us across the space between the apartments and the office. Our office is getting cluttered. We've expanded to use some of our old research lab space and the new office building across the street is rapidly approaching 'move-in' status, but the back door still gets us into a place I never imagined a few years ago.

Since Mister Prakesh was one of the announced visitors, Alan had made sure that the snack tray included some of the goodies from the Indian restaurant, so those aromatics were in the air.

"Smells like Cindy's house when she's getting creative," Terri announced.

We were there about five minutes before Maddie ushered in two of what I assume are the Google version of 'engineer'. Neither affected the 'suit and tie' look that many of our clients adopted, nor did they do the 'work shirt and slacks' look. At least their T-shirts were relatively new and clean, with interesting graphics.

Two of them. Me. Alan. Terri and Rachel. Beck and Sim.

We exchanged handshakes and introductions all the way around. One of the pair was obviously young – Chen Liu, American of Chinese descent.

You know that Terri's in charge. "Mister Chen, how old ARE you?"

"I'm nineteen, Terri."

"And you're an engineer?"

"That is correct," he smiled. "Why are you smiling like that?"

"Aunt Cindy's getting her Master's next week. She's sixteen." So much for his wowing the wunderkind, I guess.

The questions flew fast over how Terri progressed from 'we need to do something about squirrels on the bird feeder' to Bot-bot sitting beside Terri.

"We didn't BUILD the whole thing," Rachel said.

"We decided what we needed, then got others to work with us. It's a collaboration."

"But your idea."

"I start, Rachel piles on, goes in another direction. I leapfrog over that. Get Susan to build us metal parts, 3-D print some things, buy some parts off the Internet."

"Software," the older of the pair said.

"Mister Ron," Terri said, "we do the big blocks. We have some guys from school..."

"Auburn," Rachel injected, "and one of the guys is a girl."

"They do a majority of the coding for us, but they leave us handles to tie our own modules in."

"Distributed system," Ron prodded.

"More than we wanted one computer to handle, so we did the brontosaurus option."

"Do they even HAVE those any more?" Chen asked.

Terri smiled. "I think they're apatosaurs now, but we found an old book at the library and it said that they had a second brain to control the back legs."

"We talked about it," Rachel added. "If it works for dinosaurs, then we thought that it could work for Bot-bot. The mobility module carries all the software and I/O for movement. The main module decides where it needs to go, sends a command to the mobility module, the mobility module handles the bookkeeping for the tracks and the drive systems."

"Bot-bot's weaponized counterpart has a gun computer. Does ballistic calculations and firing solutions. Squirts a stream of water with a vegetable dye in it. We get rainbow squirrels out of the deal."

"But you have a central computer to do a lot of the heavy work."

"Yessir," Terri said. "Everything has to work within range of the wi-fi from the master system. But we're thinking about on-boarding those functions."

"Autonomy," Rachel said. "Bot-bot needs to go out into the world."

"But he's like a baby animal," Terri said. "He imprints on people. Right now he looks around for me or Rachel. If he sees us, he follows us. If he doesn't see us, then he looks for other people on his list. If he doesn't find anybody he knows, he sits there. If he sits too long, he sulks and whimpers."

"You can demonstrate this?" Chen asked.

"Bot-bot, leave the room," Terri commanded. Bot-bot rose up on his tracks, made a sad beep. His 'head' circled, looking for the door. He started towards it, stopped, turned his head back toward Terri, whimpered, then left.

"Oh, crap," Ron said. "I feel SORRY for him."

"We watched every robot movie we could get," Rachel said. "Wanted personality."

"Disney's gonna have a cow..." Chen mused. "Sounds too much like Wall-E."

"Bot-bot is unique," Terri announced.

Chen turned to Alan. "What's your part in this?"

"Finance," Alan said. "I write the checks to buy all the bits and pieces. Occasionally, but ONLY occasionally, I get a 'Dad, do they make something that will do THIS?' question."

"I ask a lot of people about solutions for problems," Terri said. "Cindy says..."

"Cindy. This sixteen year old with a master's degree," Chen interrupted.

"Yeah, THAT Cindy, she says that a single person can have a vision but seldom has all the answers to details. This is a lot of details. It's not exactly Legos."

"Hey, I LIKE Legos," Ron said.

"They lack the durability we desire." She paused. "Bot-bot, come back in here."

A couple of happy beeps came from outside the door. Bot-bot showed up, raised his head on a stalk to see faces, then headed for Terri, beeping happily.

"Terri, I want one," Ron said.

"I'm impressed," Chen laughed. "I don't see anything that says you're ahead of our labs in the autonomy aspects, but that's very impressive."

"So you're not making her a job offer?" I asked.

"I'm not moving to California," Terri said.

Ron and Chen exchanged looks. Ron spoke. "What about if you come out and visit us? I think we'd pay for the trip. And then some..."

Gleefully, Terri chirped, "I BEAT Cindy. I'm getting paid. Cindy was fifteen. Nikki was sixteen. I'm almost eleven!"

I know Cindy and Nikki will be as proud as Alan and I are.

The rest of the day degenerated into the two Googloids carefully watching Terri and Rachel work on a bit of coding, play with some hardware issues, and generally be themselves.

"Home schooled," Ron said. "I believe it. Those two have as much business in a public school as an elephant at a chicken farm."

Another thing – Cindy and Nikki have been practicing singing together. Nikki's still the queen of Cajun music here with her little steel triangle. She's pushed her Dan to ever higher levels of proficiency with his accordion, and of course, Cindy's actually been on stage at a Cajun music event, even though she did bluegrass.