Chapter 6

Nikki's turn:

The news! Lord, the NEWS! Okay, everybody knew that Susan had been off the pill for two months, so we just assumed that a pregnancy was imminent, but TINA! Now THAT was totally unexpected.

Yeah, Cindy and Tina and I have done the research. We all know about the subject of surgical vasectomy reversals. Nobody paid attention to spontaneous reversals. It's right there on the Internet. Happens. Rare, but happens.

That's why, the day that both Susan AND Tina announced their pregnancies, there were some unusual looks.

A couple of days later, one of our college friends was sitting next to me, sorting through notes on her iPad.

"Tina's pregnant. I heard her husband had a vasectomy before they got married."

"People know entirely too much about our private lives," I said.

"Well," Shelby said, "we were talking about female problems. My periods and the Pill. So she told me ... And now she's pregnant. Did her husband have that surgery?"

"Nope."

"Uh ... Her husband..."

"Believes her. I believe her. We ALL believe her. It's Tina, for gosh sake..."

"There's an old joke..."

Shelby's not a total whackjob, so I guess I'll bite. "Tell me the joke."

"Okay. There was this old guy. Ninety. Married a young girl. Twenty. They kept trying to get pregnant. Went to the doctor about it. All that."

"Yeah..."

"One day she says the doctor told her to go off on vacation alone, and when she got back, her husband would be extra excited and maybe that would work. So she did. When she got back from vacation, they did it. And the next month, she was pregnant. The old guy was happy, so he told his friend."

"And..."

"His friend said, 'you know, one time I had a beaver messing up my cattle pond. I never could get a shot at him. One day I was out by the pond and I saw that beaver. I didn't have my rifle, so I picked up a stick and pointed it at the beaver like it was a rifle and I said 'Bang!' And a rifle shot rang out and that beaver fell over, dead.' 'With a stick, ' the old guy said. 'Yeah, ' said his friend. 'What do you think?' 'The old guy said, 'I think somebody else shot that beaver.' 'Bingo!' said his friend." Shelby watched my eyes.

Okay, I admit that I laughed.

"So?" Shelby said.

"So it's a good joke, but Tina's hubby has a positive sperm sample."

"No shit?!?"

"Zero shit," I countered, letting that little cat out of the bag.

And yes, I am happy for BOTH pregnant mommies. Maybe a tiny bit jealous, but happy nonetheless. it's a week until the graduation ceremony. I'm not sure about a further career at Auburn. I mean, I HAVE a job, guaranteed.

Last week I'm sitting in what passes for MY office, a cubicle at 3Sigma. My phone rings. I pick up. Maddie says, "A Mister Jakes to speak with you about Lawson Manufacturing."

I know about Lawson. I have a set of videos of one of their packing machines messing up. I also have a file of the program for that machine. I have a plan. Make a little money. Help some people out. Make the world a better place. Of course when I say something like that to Cindy, she reacts with her Dan's standard, 'And then we sit in a circle and sing Kumbayah.' But she'd do the same thing.

"Thank you, Maddie. I got it." I punch the button on my phone. "3Sigma. This is Nikki Granger."

"Mizz Granger, this is Hawley Jakes. Did you get those files?"

"Yes, Mister Jakes, I did. I looked at them."

"Do you see something that you can help us with? I mean, besides telling us to buy a new packaging machine."

"I do, Mister Jakes," I said.

"What do you think?"

"You have an old machine and an old program that tells it how to run. It doesn't tell it how to stop."

"Huh?"

"The program was fine stuff twenty or twenty-five years ago, when the machine was tight and you had an operator sitting right there watching it. Now you want it automated, and you push the button for it to run and it runs. That is, until something skips and one of the parts doesn't go into the right place at the right time. It stops by jamming itself into a knot."

"That's right ... That's what it does. So what can you do for us?"

"We're going to need to add a few things to give it positive positioning information, then we're going to redo the program. Your old controller won't handle what you need to do any more, so you'll get a new one. We will fix it so that it runs just like it does now, but it's gonna be like a GOOD human operator. It will know when things change and it will either adjust itself or shut itself down before pieces break."

"You got all that by looking at those videos..."

"And the program. It's older than the first stuff I ever worked with, but I understand it."

"Can you come visit us and talk about it? And look at the machine?"

"I can come visit, but I'm really iffy on going on the factory floor."

"It's clean. Kinda noisy, though."

"That's not the problem."

"What's the problem?"

"I'm not eighteen yet. The feds say I can't go onto the factory floor except like an escorted tour."

"You're not eighteen?"

"In a couple of months. But not right now."

"But your website, your business info, it says Nikki Granger, BSEE."

"That's absolutely correct. And next week it will be MSEE. But I'm seventeen."

"The conversation we just had..."

"Did I disappoint you?"

"No, you surprised me. The man who recommended that we talk to you spoke very highly..."

"Who was that?"

"Jerry Watson. He's the chief of maintenance at that big powerhouse. Said you did some things with his sootblowers..."

"Oh, yeah," I said. I smiled. "My husband's an electrical engineer. We did some work at that powerplant. It was a little job for me. But it was sort of like yours. Control program that ran things but couldn't stop things if they went wrong."

"You do this stuff. Really?"

"Yessir," I said. "My first automation project was a feeder and watering system for our cat. That was two years ago. My husband brought home an outdated controller and I put it to work. Now, let's talk hardware. How prone is your machine to squirting grease and oil and debris?"

"Not bad. Why?"

"I'm deciding on sensors. Optics are easy to use, but they require a clean environment."

"What else could you use?"

"Rotary or linear encoders. Magnetic proximity detectors. I even put an ultrasonic level detection system in. Or RF. Like the door openers at the grocery store. Lots of ways to go. Depends on how bad the conditions are. How much distance. Tolerances."

"And you're..."

"Short version? That arm that picks the lids. In the cycle, it's supposed to grab a lid when the bucket is coming. When the bucket is in position, it's supposed to put the lid in place. Right now, it does that. But if the bucket doesn't show up, it still gets a lid. Swings into place. And hits the bucket transport."

"Yes, it does."

"So we add some things that tell it where the bucket is and where the arm is and if either one doesn't show up in the right place at the right time, we take an alternative action."

"Okay. Come visit us. I am going to really enjoy seeing some faces when you show up here."

I HAVE a job. That's it. I have to talk to Dan about when we can make that four hundred mile trip. The Mooney will fly that in about two hours with a rental car waiting when we get there.

Susan and Jason are a legend among the utility companies. They do a lot of the field work, Jason's forte'. I'm told that Cindy and her Dan and Jason and Susan command quite a presence in the conference rooms on some of those projects. Cindy and I work together on the communications there. Fiber optics. Slightly odd stuff like spread-spectrum radio. We integrate all those together. Makes the system work.

Cindy's sitting in the meeting. "No, you don't have to get rid of your legacy equipment for a couple more budget cycles. We can make this work for a lot less money. Here's what we can do."

And I'm watching her walk up to the big whiteboard in front of a roomful of engineers and she starts drawing lines and blocks. "This system can go up to this data rate. It's slow. But we can feed it into here..." she said, drawing a block. "We install this box. We designed it to do just this – take old rates and protocols, translate, store and send them along into your high-speed backbone, and then retrieve them at the other end."

"Who makes a box that does that?" one of the client engineers asked.

"Gensys," I said. "They bought our design a year ago."

"Your design?"

Cindy did that 'almost giggle' thing she does. "Nikki did the software. I did the hardware. Susan did the physical config. Tina kept track of everything and put together the document package. We demonstrated it and sold it to Gensys."

One of the guys at the table was cradling his head in his hands. "Ages. What are your ages?"

"I'm about to turn eighteen. Cindy turns seventeen at the end of the summer, Tina's nineteen and Susan's twenty. Is that a problem?"

"Not if I squeeze my eyes really tight. My daughter sells T-shirts at the mall. You're selling protocol converters to Gensys."

"Everybody has a place," I said. "Love 'er where she's at..."

"I know..." he said. "Still, you're a shock."

"I've heard that before," I said. "I'm fortunate. Stray neutrino hit the egg or something. But here we are..."

"And you're sure of this? This fix?"

"Absolutely," I said. "Southern Power's already using something just like it. Same problems."

"Everybody has the same problems, Nikki. Technology changes. More capabilities, more needs, more needs, more data, etc. etc., ad infinitum." I smiled. "We could go back to electromechanical relays and single-channel carrier."

"Hush, child," one of the other engineers laughed. "We still have some of that in service."

"A lot of that," another pushed.

The lead guy turned to Dan. "Do you have anything to add?"

Dan laughed. "At the end of the day? PE (Auth. Note: Professional Engineer – legal status required by many entities both commercial and governmental) stamp."

"I'm trying for my PE, but age ... Experience ... Those things. For some reason they don't just hand out PE stamps." I did my best smile.

"You'd be surprised, Nikki." He paused. "One of my friends at Southern Power said to ask for your slide show. Something about a railgun."

Time to play demure. "But that has nothing to do with this project."

"Look," he said. "3Sigma's GOT the project. Show us the pictures."

You know it's right there on my laptop. A whole slide show. And another. We fielded questions about the railgun.