Chapter 7

Carl’s turn:

Dammit, Dana! “Are you guys dating?” she asked.

“We don’t have to date,” I said. “We’ve been sharing one vehicle and we live side by side in the RV park.”

Dana giggled. “Sunny, I think I hit a nerve. He’s turning red.”

“Dammit! Y’all caught me off guard. We’re having an innocent breakfast, is all.”

“Oh,” Dana said with a little smirk.

“Baby,” Ed chided, “people work together, they don’t have to be dating.”

“You,” she giggled, “You better believe that. You ‘n Laci go on entirely too many trips together...”

“We travel for work,” Ed back-pedaled.

“And that can be perfectly innocent,” I said. “Sunny and I ... one truck. Half the conversation at dinner is about work...”

“Just leaves the OTHER half,” Dana pushed.

“And that part’s about movies and music and life in general,” Sunny inserted.

“Stop picking on poor Carl,” Ed said. “Let ‘im enjoy breakfast.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Same time though, a seed is planted.

No, that’s wrong. The seed was there first time I saw Sunny. However, I’m familiar with the traps involved with ‘fishing off the company pier’. Accordingly, there was restraint on my part. I wasn’t even flirty.

I did, however, enjoy a bit of watching as she moved. Kind of fluid, she is. Lithe. Graceful.

And smart. Had to be, to get good reports from Jason. Add to the mix, she’s been chosen by the robotics bunch to be the caretaker for the prototype Luggage in its first field trial. That ‘Luggage’ thing has me thinking that somebody sees Sunny as a little above a run-of-the-mill technician.

Of course Jason doesn’t hire run-of-the-mill technicians, as evidenced by me being one of his hires.

Two weeks of knowing Sunny. ‘Carl, what are you thinking?’ I ask myself.

Myself answers, ‘Stupid stuff. Just be happy you have a great co-worker and leave it at that.’

So, breakfast over, I’m lost in Auburn, Alabama with no wheels and no idea what to do until things start cranking up for dinner and the music was supposed to start. It’s almost a family kind of thing. I’ve heard about it – they play and sing for the fun of it. They even have videos of it on the company website, and a few, of the musicians only, are on Youtube, so I can see that first, I can stand the music, and second, I don’t have to dress up.

Also, that Sunny says this is where SHE wants to be, that tells me something about Sunny.

Of course, it could be that ‘people’ angle. That’s a bit of data, too.

But between breakfast, which we just walked out of, and then...

“Do you have plans, Carl?”

“I really don’t. I guess you could drop me off at the hotel...”

“You don’t have wheels.”

“That’s a fact.”

“Can we figure out something we can both do?”

“What you got in mind?”

“Campus tour, first?”

“That’s a start. You’re driving.”

She’s been on campus – student, you know. Showed me the landmarks of the place.

“Wanna go see where Luggage was born?”

“It’s Saturday. Who’s gonna be there?”

“That’s part of the fun of this place. People come in on the weekend to work...”

“Can we get in?”

She waved her phone. “Got an app that lets me in.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, seriously, you think that a bunch that’re on the cutting edge of digital technology are gonna require metal keys?”

“I guess not.”

There were three people working in there – an Indian dude working with a girl with an intent look on her face, a computer screen in front of her, and a guy working at a workstation a bit away against a wall with several mechanical bits in front of him.

“Good morning, Sunny,” the Indian guy said.

“Good morning, Vivek. This is Carl, my co-worker. Carl, this is Vivek Gupta. He’s our head of software development.” To the girl, she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know you. I’m Sunny Kim. I’m field-testing Luggage.”

“Ohhh,” she replied, “I’m Katie Simpson. I’m an intern...”

“Very dedicated if you’re in here on Saturday,” I said. She wasn’t strikingly pretty, just a comfortable-looking brown-haired, brown-eyed thing, but hey, Saturday, banging away at a keyboard?

She turned and smiled. “Got this problem, you know ... and Vivek’s got three of us on it, slave-driver that he is ... And this morning I was eating my Froot Loops and it came to me – we’ve been hitting it head on instead of finessing from two different angles.”

“I am not a slave-driver,” Vivek said in self-defense. “I am here on my Saturday because she called and said that she had the solution.”

And I noted in my peripheral vision that when Katie started smiling at me, Sunny’s disposition made a slightly darker change.

She nudged me with a hip. “Lemme show you the hardware part. Lot more interesting to look at.”

“Good luck on your problem,” I told Katie and Vivek, and I followed Sunny deeper into the chaos.

I remarked on the Chaos.

“I thought so too,” she said, “but a lot of ‘em LIKE it like this. Those that don’t, they get a little office. There’s Cindy’s, and Nikki’s and Terri’s.”

I want an office with a flying dinosaur on the door one day...

The guy at the mechanical bench showed us a linear actuator he was playing with. He did have the social skills to introduce himself as ‘Chris’.

“I don’t know where we’re going with it. I have a 3D printed sleeve with grooves in it. I put this shaft and these polymer balls, and when I spin one shaft, the other moves in or out.”

“Looks neat,” I said. Rotary motion’s cheap...”

“My point,” he said. “Mature tech. But 3D is prototype. Too expensive and too fragile to take commercial.”

I snorted. “I’d ship the drawing to China. They’ll send you a twenty-foot Conex full of them in a month and a half.”

“We’re tryin’ really hard to stay out of China,” he replied. “Especially if we’re looking at a defense application.”

“Everything’s a defense application, you know...”

“Yeah. Sunny, how’s Luggage holding up?”

“He’s working wonderfully. We use ‘im. The construction crew uses ‘im. He usually hits his charging station at lunch.”

“What about his undercarriage? Mechanicals?”

“You guys said NOT to use a high pressure water gun on ‘im, but we’ve used a regular water hose and nozzle. That clay on the jobsite’s sticky.”

“Tear-down’s gonna be revelatory,” Chris said. “Can’t wait until the job’s over.”

“Then don’t wait,” I said. “Catch a trip there and back, spend a few days looking at ‘im, watch how he’s used on the jobsite...”

“You know, that’s just about a great idea,” he said. “But that leaves me with a big mystery...”

“Mystery?” Sunny queried.

“Yeah ... How am I gonna get there?”

“They’re flying stuff everywhere,” Sunny said. “That’s how we got back – piggy-backed onto one of Cindy’s crew hauls.”

He shook his head. “That new plane, I’d ride THAT. But they’re just as likely to take one of those old Cessnas...”

“I’ve ridden in those too,” Sunny said. “Just as safe. Lots more scenic, a mile above ground instead of five miles in the air. Tell Cindy or Nikki you want a quick ride to see how it is...”

“Or Jerry...” Chris said.

“‘Course, he ain’t gonna get more’n ten yards away from Terri for a while. I’m glad they’re finally married,” said Sunny.

“Yeah,” Chris replied. “It was almost painful watching those two trying so hard to be all proper ‘n shit. I dunno if I’d have that much patience.”

“Uh, fourteen, Chris...”

“Yeah, there IS that. But if you’re gonna commit a felony, at least be in love with the victim.”

I laughed. “You oughta write cards for Hallmark.”

“Doesn’t sound as much fun as this,” he said. “‘Sides, I’d hate to have to maintain this level of brilliance full-time.”

I laughed. “Same problem I’ve got.”

Sunny jabbed an elbow into my side. “You fail, sensei. You show mediocre brilliance.”

Chris snickered. “Mediocre brilliance. I need to remember that one.”

I asked for and got a bit of an intro into a couple of 3D printers and I saw some neat things being done with little robots.

“Don’t ask about drones,” Chris said. “We’re going at ‘em sideways. I hear things...”

So that side of 3Sigma is a big step from MY side of 3Sigma where the electrical power industry plods along, a little step at a time, because ultimately you need to deliver megawatts somewhere and that takes cables thick as your wrist and transformers you can park your car on. Might not be as glamorous as robotics, but it pays the bills.

Noon found us at a hamburger joint near the campus, and after that we headed over to the community pavilion. Being a nice afternoon, there was a pickup kickball game going on and I sided with one team, Sunny with the other, and we had a bit of fun and a bit of exercise and a lot of laughter and good-natured ribbing.

Somebody at this place knows how to barbecue. That took care of dinner.

Music? Oh, yeah ... Cajun favorites were in there. I was out there two-stepping with thirteen year old Vicki Duncan. I looked over and saw a bemused expression on Sunny’s face. When that tune was over, I relinquished Vicki and passed by the accordion player. That’s Dan Granger, whom I knew from before either of us were 3Sigma.

“You dance like a Cajun,” he laughed.

“I resemble that remark,” I came back. “Uh, you got another two-step in that thing? I need to teach Sunny something.”

“Bosco Stomp, coming up.” He turned to the two fiddlers and the guitar player. That’s another Dan, the husband of Cindy.