Chapter 54

Flight of the pTerridactyl:

The hive mind is real. If you see a lot of people doing something and enjoying it, a natural inclination is to want to enjoy it as well.

In this community there are several things that meet that criterion. One is music. Another is cooking.

And there’s flying. Flying, such as makes my Aunt Cindy famous in a small way.

We have a lot of airplanes around us. Us, me, Dad, Tina and Kathy, we have a Cessna 182. Cindy and her Dan have a Cessna 180, which is almost the same thing except ours is a tricycle gear and theirs is a tail-dragger. Nikki and her Dan have a Mooney. It looks fast even when it’s sitting on the apron. Johanna and Stoney have the Micco. It’s red, like Johanna’s hair, and it’s little and has that ‘I’m fun’ look. Susan ‘n’ Jason (I use that contraction when I think of them. They just SEEM like it should be Susan ‘n’ Jason, almost a high school romance, although Jason’s six years older than her) have another Cessna 182.

And 3Sigma has TWO planes, that big (not really big, but BIG to us) Cessna 402 twin, Cindy’s Songbird, and that little Cessna 150 trainer that started out as Susan ‘n’ Jason’s. Those are actually property of 3S Transport Inc., a corporation set up for protection, as Dad says, from the minions of Hell, lawyers and accountants.

I’ve been flying in every one of ‘em and a few others as well. Sundays when the weather’s nice we sort of have a little social at the airfield and a few people know about it and fly in to visit. Sometimes we have contests around flying. I got to be the bombardier for one of our contests – flour-bombing. Mister Barton flies in from western Georgia in an airplane that’s older than he is – 1946. It’s a neat old thing.

Actually, he took me and Vicki and Rachel all up, one at a time, for bombing runs. It’s fun. That thing clatters along at seventy-five miles an hour, we’re a thousand feet above a big X in the grass by the runway, and you toss a two-pound bag of flour out of the plane trying to hit the X.

It’s almost as much luck as skill. I haven’t won, yet, but I got to fly in that old plane.

So okay, I like flying. I’ve gotten to fly in the front seat a bunch of times. I caught Cindy one day.

“Hey, Terri,” she said. I was crossing the yard from my house.

“Hi, Cindy. Whatcha doin’?”

“Going to Mister Wally’s office. Wanna get a book he has. Why?”

“Can you take me flying?”

“I guess I could. You go tell Tina or your dad. I’ll tell Dan.”

That took a few minutes. I met her in the yard again.

“I have a special request, though.”

“Okay,” Cindy said.

I know she’s listening now. I don’t often ask for special things.

“What’s that?” she asked me.

“I wanna fly in the 150.”

“Oh, okay. It’s a lot less expensive to fly.”

“And I want to fly in the left seat.”

“Huh?”

“Left seat. Like a student.”

“Terri, you’re eleven. You...”

“I know. Sixteen. Student license. Seventeen. Private. Somebody showed me the way.” I smiled at her. I know she knows I’m talking about her. “I want to feel the controls for real. I’m learning things.”

“Okay. I can’t see anything wrong with that,” she said.

We untied the little Cessna. “Now, let’s talk about preflight inspections,” Cindy said.

There are a couple of things to know here. First, the complete manual for the Cessna 150, as well as all our other aircraft, is on the company server, so I’ve read it. Another thing. I’m not some standard girl-child who knows how to put fashions on her Barbie. Bot-bot is there because we built him and we regularly take him apart to install one modification or another, so mechanical (and electrical and optical, et cetera) things are not mysterious to me. The little Cessna’s technology is eighty years old, except for the electronics. They’re a bit more recent.

However, when one’s teacher is on the way to being a minor aviation legend--that’s Cindy--then one is well advised to pay attention.

A little step ladder lets me get a better view of the inside of the engine compartment and I need it to check the fuel levels in the tanks in either wing. Did all that, then for the first time, I get in the pilot’s seat. Yes, my feet reach the rudder pedals. I wish I could do a better job on the toe brakes, but I will take what I can get.

I know about checklists. Cindy hands me the laminated page. Cessna 150. One page, front and back. I wonder what the checklists look like for that Cessna Citation that made Cindy famous (again).

“Okay, kiddo,” Cindy says. She knows that ‘kiddo’ is a little poke at me. “We’re running.”

“I see that. The spinny thing’s goin’ round and round,” I reply. Payback for ‘kiddo’ and she knows it.

“Are your toes on the brakes?”

“They are. I dunno how much pressure, though. I’m kinda short.”

“I’m going to let off the brakes on my side. I’m following you if you flake out.”

“I do NOT flake out, thank you...”

She smiled. “Okay, you’re holding us still. Let off the brakes and see if we move.”

I eased the pressure from my toes and we rolled slowly.

“Steer with your feet,” she said. “There’s a bit of lag. Takes a lot of pedal to get you to change directions.”

It does. But if I don’t go fast, and I’m not, we’re okay. There’s not any other traffic, so I taxi down the runway to the far end. There’s a run-up pad off one side.

“Steer onto the pad. I’m watching.”

An hour later we’re landing. I’m following on the controls and letting Cindy do this part. She’s been giving me a running narrative of everything we’ve done. She let me taxi back to the apron. I tried to hit the tie-down spot, but missed. She took over, made a little circle and then... “Checklist. Shut down.”

I chocked the main gear while Cindy tied the wings down, then the tail.

Thus endeth my first real lesson.

“So what’s the deal, Terri?” Cindy asked me.

“Doesn’t have to be a deal. Everybody flies and nobody has to force anybody. I know it’s fun. I like flying WITH people. But I wanna do it myself.”

“OF course you do. I started when I was fourteen, though.”

“Did I do bad?”

“No. You did quite good. You’ve been in the front seat a lot of times and you’ve had the controls a lot of times. It shows. If you ask, you can probably get more left seat time. That’s what I did for years. Dan was pretty good about it. I let him have the left seat if we were flying into a busy airport or something.”

“Suppose I want to fly by myself?”

“Not one of these planes,” Cindy said.

Okay, I know she knows. She’s trying to be safe and tactful and she’s gonna make me go to Dad and Tina. That’s okay. I have a plan.

Alan’s turn:

It’s been weeks, and Lord, here we go again -- another visit to Dr. Stebbins’ conference room, for the resolution (I hope) of the impasse between Google and DoD. Munchkins in the middle, of course, and Cindy and Nikki in attendance.

And a guy I only recently met. He looks like a lawyer, because he IS a lawyer.

When everyone had been seated, Cindy stood up, and said, “Folks, we have a new fellow here today -- I’d like to introduce Jack Haggarty.”

He stood and waved, and sat back down. Cindy continued, “I met Jack a few weeks ago, when he was a passenger on my infamous Citation flight, and he acted as my co-pilot for a few anxious minutes. Now, Jack is a corporate attorney, and has agreed to represent the Munchkins’ interests here. Jack, would you please report to us?”

Jack stood and said, “Having given the DoD v. Google situation a review and some extensive thought, a serious issue is arising here -- it cannot be resolved informally. Google is entirely public, and commercial. DoD is absolutely the reverse. When DoD classifies a public effort, they take ownership of it, and all the associated R&D. They have to compensate the original owners, but from that point forward, the project becomes government property. Another complicating issue is that Auburn, and any other school receiving government funds, which is most of them, is also bound by government regulations, and this creates another obstacle for Google.”

“To resolve this issue, and at the direction of the Munchkins, I recently took steps to incorporate ‘Hogwarts Technology Corporation’. We have received the certificate of incorporation, and have assigned ownership of Bot-bot and Zeke to the corporation.”

Dr. Stebbins interrupted: “Isn’t there a liability problem there? How did you get permission to use the “Hogwarts” name?”

pTerri stood and said, “Well, we got Nikki to take a picture of us with Bot-bot, and I got J.K. Rowling’s email address and sent her the picture, and asked her permission. Mizz Rowling said it was a delightful idea, but I had to promise her a lab tour and some of Cindy’s cookies.” She giggled. “And then lawyers on our side and solicitors on her side got involved. Cookies remained part of the deal.”

Several hands went over eyes, and several loud sighs ensued.

Jack continued: “The only solution I see is to let DoD compensate the corporation for the removal of Zeke from commercial exploitation. Google’s valuation can be used as a basis for the government compensation. At that point, the Munchkins can continue with development of Bot-bot for commercial application, and can further become tech-reps for Zeke development, in some secure location. From the little that I know about it, the DoD interest has to be in the various modes of target identification, acquisition, and firing modes. All the rest is “just wheels”, more or less. And in correspondence with representatives of Miss Rowling, she understands that Hogwarts Technology Corporation is only going to be in existence for the remainder of these negotiations. It will disappear in a legal fashion upon conclusion of the settlement between the parties represented here.”

Ken Roth spoke up: “I have to know so that I can report back: How much money is the commercial application worth?”

Kim Hong Li, Little Miss Google herself-- I think she’s the Korean version of Cindy or Nikki)--said, “Our initial projection was about $10 million, but I think it’s gone up a little. I can get you firm numbers this afternoon, if that’s OK.”

Ken gave a sigh and said, “That’s actually a relief -- I was worried that it might be much higher. But I’m pretty sure we can live with numbers in that range.”