Chapter 16

Tara’s turn:

So nobody actually TOLD me about the status of Terri and Jerry. I didn’t pay attention to any of the relationships involving the Munchkins because they’re all pre-teens and they’re not supposed to be HAVING relationships, right?

Wrong. How could I be so wrong? I mean, first I have the evidence in my own household. Derek’s enamored of Rachel. I saw that, but silly me, I wrote it off as one of those cute things that happen with kids.

I can hide behind the fact that I was new to the community and that I had a lot of things going on in life at this time. I guess I should’ve paid attention.

Like I said – new girl ... As part of the community’s deal, I’m expected to spend some time working with one of the businesses. Since Derek was immediately assimilated into 3Sigma Robotics I decided that’s what I should do.

It really does interest me. Dad says, no, Dad said I had a tomboy streak in me. I liked Legos and Kinex a lot more than I did dolls. I liked helping Dad work on things – the mower, small appliances, the cars, because I wanted to KNOW. In the robotics lab, I enter into a world of people who know a lot and who want to know and do more.

I honestly didn’t KNOW. I knew that Terri was often physically near Jerry, but Jerry’s a great engineer and a nice guy and good teacher, so I thought nothing of it. I didn’t pay attention.

I did pay attention to Derek and Rachel and I saw that just maybe Derek was a little more into Rachel than Rachel was towards Derek. Derek’s my baby brother, though, and I’ve been big sister and surrogate mom to him since Mom passed away, so I’m kind of tuned to his frequency.

So on about the second or third day I was in the lab, I found myself in the office area poring over block diagrams that gave an overview of mobility controls. It’s pretty heavy stuff, so I was oblivious to my surroundings until I leaned back in the chair, rubbed my eyes, and looked over to see Jerry at a computer.

“Hi, Jerry,” I said.

“Hey, Tara. What’re you doing?”

“Mobility controls. Tryin’ to get from ‘completely lost’ to ‘I have some idea’. The Munchkins did this?”

“Oh, yeah, quite a bit of it. Terri’s got a way of sawing problems into smaller and smaller bits, then tossing them to CompSci students to code.”

“So she doesn’t actually write code?” I asked, somehow relieved.

“Oh, no,” he said. “Little thing seems to have some kind of supernatural understanding of programming. It’s just that she also had the best grasp of the big picture that goes into a project, so we leave most of the coding to others.”

“She’s something,” I said.

“Yes, she is,” he returned.

I should’ve interpreted his smile differently. Like I said, I was on the playing field and didn’t even know there was a game on.

I leaned back, noted the time. It’s pushing lunchtime. Okay. The guy’s got visible evidence of good prospects – engineer, smart, good job, good looking, so... “Wanna run out for lunch with me?” I ask, adding my more charming version of a smile.

“Sorry. Can’t,” he said.

“Okay. Maybe some other time?”

“Uh, Tara, don’t take this wrong, but I’m kinda committed to someone...”

“Oh,” I said, trying hard not to emit sounds of serious deflation. I mean, first try and I’m shot down. “Somebody at school?”

“Somebody here. I thought it was pretty much common knowledge. Unspoken, but common knowledge.”

“Who?” I asked. I’m running down an inventory of the females (being all too presumptive, these days) and there are a few. I’m thinking Amy Tran, second-generation American of Vietnamese parentage, every bit the stereotypical super-intelligent Asian goddess, or any of three plain ol’ American girls like me. Or maybe a student cycling through as an intern/student.

He looked around to see who was within earshot, then, “Terri...”

I gasped. “Is that even legal?”

“Nothing sexual,” he said. “She says it’s me and I say it’s her and it just IS.”

“You’re what? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?”

“Twenty, actually. I’m the male iteration of the wunderkind like Cindy and Nikki and the bunch. And YOU.”

“I’m twenty-two. I’m still a freshman...”

“You’re NOT a freshman, according to Cindy. You’re taking some freshman electives. She says your math is way past that, that you’re doing well in the engineering curricula...”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

“I do,” he said. “And there’s Terri, who’s beating us all.”

“And you two are together.”

“Committed,” he said. “L-word and all.”

“Seriously? Twelve...”

“Who drew up the document on your screen?”

“Terri...”

“Wanna rethink that whole ‘twelve’ thing?”

I’m trying to understand this now. “But that’s a different area of thought. Socially...”

He smiled. “Socially, she’s taken the lead in this place too many times to count. She says ‘mature’, I have trouble arguing. If she were some kind of sex-obsessed pre-teenie I’d still be in Houston. I just don’t see it. Neither do her dad and Tina, although they’re worried.”

“I’d worry ... Twelve.”

“I do worry. But I’ve made my decision with all the seriousness I can muster. It’s like being in love with a female da Vinci who’s too young to do anything about it.”

“Oh, well,” I said. “Nothing ventured...”

“Thank you. If it means anything, I’m flattered, Tara.”

“You should be,” I quipped. “But I didn’t know I was competing with the pTerridactyl.”

“Yeah, that’s kinda the thing. She IS the pTerridactyl and she informs me that said status means she’s really a hundred and fifty million years old.”

“And I don’t doubt it,” I said.

“You know you and Derek are always welcome to join us for dinner or whatever. We never do anything alone, just me and her. One of our rules.”

“Yeah, well, Derek can hardly be pried away from Rachel...”

“Which causes her mom and dad sleepless nights,” Jerry said.

“And that makes me the odd man out ... I was looking for social interaction with the opposite sex.”

“Tara, you shouldn’t have trouble in that regard...”

“I’m awfully picky.”

“You should be. But seriously, there are some out and about.”

I smiled. “Well, Terri snagged one. I suppose I can, too.”

Jerry left me to my work. Derek came by to see me.

“Oh, you came to see ME? What happened? Did Rachel enter a trans-dimensional rift?”

“Taraaaa,” he whined.

“Don’t whine. It’s unbecoming for male or female,” I said. “So what’s up?”

“Lawn mowers. I saw a guy out there cutting the grass and I said that Bot-bot could do that. Cindy says I am now the team lead for lawn care automation.”

I laughed. “Beats school back home, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. What passed for science class. Watching a celery stalk suck up red dye. Get real!” he said. “Can you imagine them giving us a class on soldering and wire connectors and fasteners? I can’t.”

“You’re learning. So you have ideas about how to move Bot-bot into lawn care?”

“I’m thinking about how I did it. Goin’ back and forth, that’s no big deal. How to get it to cover the yard, that’s no big deal. Avoiding the trees, no big deal. How to handle things it doesn’t expect, that’s a big deal.”

“So run with what you’ve got, then when you start bogging down, drag others into it. I’m sure Rachel would help.”

“Yeah. Rachel.”

“It’s OKAY, Derek,” I said. “It’s okay to like ‘er.”

“The other boys at the home-school group tease me.”

“That’s just the way some kids are. Are you happy about your feelings for Rachel?”

“Well, yeah. You ask me that all the time.”

“I know. But people’s feelings change. Has Rachel changed the way she feels about you?”

He shook his head in the negative. “No. We hold hands ‘n’ stuff.”

“Stuff...”

“Okay,” he said, glancing around, then softly, “we kissed, you know...”

“No, I don’t know. I don’t watch you all the time.”

“We did.”

“And how did you feel about that? Big deal?”

“It is a big deal to me. And to Rachel.”

“Keep it between you and Rachel, brother. Boys like to brag about stuff. It diminishes what you have for the girl. And you DO have something with Rachel, right?”

He nodded. “I know. I hear things.”

And he was off to work on his new project, leaving me to think about a reality where my baby brother has both a girlfriend AND a project.

Late in the afternoon Cindy walks in. “Hey, Tara, are you making progress?”

“I am. I’m not totally lost. I’m looking at the handles y’all left in the coding so you could use these blocks for different platforms.”

“Yeah. We tried documenting them so that future programmers could tie into them. I think Derek’s getting his feet wet in that puddle. Terri said she talked with him about lawn care. I think there’s a market for that. I wonder why we didn’t consider it.”

“Because you didn’t have to push your whiney little brother out the door once a week to cut the grass.”

She laughed. “I’m so spoiled. I’m thinking that we need to get Henry involved as a consultant.”

“He’ll get a kick out of that. The guy’s funny.” Henry (NOT Enrique) Lopez was third generation Alabaman, a member of a tight little community all its own. His wife was the keeper of the community kitchen. Both of them enjoyed somewhat supervisory positions and were frequent visitors to the social confabs that seem to make up the core of the social life here. “I’ll mention it to Derek.”

“Nah, not right away. Part of good R&D is marshaling your resources. See if Derek figures it out on his own. If he’s what I think he is, he’ll be out there getting some data on how to control one of those commercial mowers.”

“Yeah. With Rachel right there taking notes,” I laughed.

“They’re cute,” Cindy said.

“Why didn’t you tell me about Jerry and the pTerridactyl?” I asked her.