Chapter 17

Cindy’s turn:

I’m about ready to ditch the wheelchair. I can walk short distances now, but crossing campus is still a bit of a stretch. I’m supposed to meet the pTerridactyl at the engineering building. There was a time when we’d be walking together, but since she’s married now, our paths don’t cross as much.

I’m waiting on a call from Dana. One of our remote sisters has issues and I’m thinking Dana’s family might be a key to an amenable solution. I find it somewhat amusing that a group as centered around engineering as we are would have this veritable halo of really good attorneys attached, from my own Mister Charlie, to Dana’s ‘grandpa, to Kara’s dad, my friend Mister Jack Haggarty, and both Nikki and Tina have acquaintance with Louisiana judges. I’m thinking that if we need legal support, we’re good.

The ‘cast’ immobilizing my leg has a bad habit of starting an itch that I can’t reach to scratch, at least until I get home and can take it off for a minute to a) scratch the itch and b) wash the covered area. I understand that before these new things, old plaster casts might remain in place for weeks and you just had to deal with the misery. I can feel the beginnings of one of those episodes. I’m ignoring it.

My version of a mobile wheelchair isn’t anything like the traditional thing, you know, two big wheels, two little ones, even when motorized. Mine was four tracked footlets on articulated legs. My accident gave the robotics bunch a new challenge – a human-carrying platform. Bart’s race-car bucket seat sat atop what started as our Bubbabot. At least he was Bubbabot when he left us for a field trial. The bunch in Louisiana renamed him Luggage after the magical travel trunk in Terry Pratchett’s Rincewind the Wizard novels.

In the past three weeks the platform has narrowed, pretty easy with our modular design, so that it fits through more doors and halls without being an obstacle. Control was reworked from the original voice command and portable console to voice command and a joystick on either armrest. It was quite handy.

Like today. The office building that was my goal had the standard broad steps, but also had the ADA-compliant wheelchair ramp. The ramp makes it easy, but my platform can handle the steps with ease. Like I said, four tracked footlets. Hold the joystick in ‘forward’ until the tracks hit the steps, then the intelligent control package quickly said, ‘hey! Steps! I got this!’ and picked up a footlet to the right height, eased it forward onto a step, and set it down, supporting the platform weight. Then it repeated with the other front foot, eased the platform forward to adjust the center of gravity, then repeated with the rear feet. It takes longer to say it than it does for Luggage to do it, and the total operation was as fast as the normal pedestrian would do.

So that’s what I did, heading for the front door, when, “Now THAT is impressive!” Female voice. I turned my head. Another wheelchair, this one at the top of the conventional ramp. “Where’d that come from?”

Female. Brunette. Upscale chair. She had a backpack in her lap. I’ve seen her on campus before, but never at close range. “I’m Kinsey Griffin. You’re Cindy Richards, I believe...”

“I believe I am,” I said. “Happy to meet you.”

“Word around is that you’re all over engineering.”

“Yeah, that’s the story. Electrical engineering, branched off into robotics. Our company, 3Sigma Robotics, stays tied to the university.”

“And your leg?” as she eyed my cast (not really a cast – those were plaster).

“Car accident.”

“And you got THIS?”

I noted the buzz on my watch telling me of the appointment I was here for.

“Kinsey, I got a pressing appointment, maybe an hour. Can I get your info and see if we can meet after that?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’d love it.”

Appointment. Talk about structure and documentation for some of the university students who were contributors to 3Sigma Robotics. Yes, we’re giving out college credits AND paychecks AND bonuses. I don’t have to do a very hard selling job. Nikki and I have great positioning on the university roster, for one thing. Another is that it’s almost inevitable that we peel off motivated students for 3Sigma and while we aren’t averse to a B or C student with potential, they usually become A students.

I was navigating back to the car when my cellphone assaulted me. Aaron Kettler, formerly of the Air Force, now husband of Tara and COO for 3Sigma Robotics.

He says ‘front man’. I say ‘When we need a corporate face that doesn’t look like a college girl.’

“What’s up, boss?” I ask him. That’s just to get him going. His standard answer is ‘You HIRED me!’

“We need a meeting this afternoon – key people. You, Nikki, me, whatever Munchkins, Vivek...”

“This has gotta be good...”

“We’re teleconferencing Anders in...”

“Really big, then,” I said.

“Yeah. Really...”

“Two-ish?”

I could imagine him shaking his head. Ex-military. All about schedules and times. “Awww, Cindy, let’s say fourteen hundred hours, our conference room.”

“Yessir, boss...”

Now I’m running through possibilities. We’ve been doing some interesting things with both mobility and autonomy and we’re outgrowing our facility. Scratch that. We’ve OUTGROWN our facility. We are pushing one end of the building out, finally succumbing to separation of the software and firmware development and the hardware development.

Vivek’s comments were that this might not be a good thing. “You yourself have seen us working on the fly with hardware development,” he said. “We’ve done some things that are stirring the industry because we have tuned our software to the actual hardware. Our code can be tighter than others because we address the physics of our hardware directly in our code.”

That’s why Vivek Gupta, original adoptee of the pTerridactyl and Rachel, is manager of software development.

The bigger picture, though, it that through our negotiations with biggies like Boeing and Raytheon (military stuff, mostly) and Google, and yes, to my Dan’s surprise, Apple, we’ve been getting feelers about becoming incorporated into one of them. So far, it’s just been talk.

I get to the robotics shop. Laugh softly as my ‘wheelchair’ unloads himself and comes around to the door of the car. I can get myself out of the car and into the chair, but by the time I’m doing that, a couple of our staff are hovering, trying to find out how they can help, against my protests.

Mandy’s turn:

“Nothing succeeds like success,” the guy said. Go figure.

It’s peculiar how so many things can change, while a few don’t change at all. Moving here to have a REAL Dad and Mom, pretty big stuff. And REAL sisters, robotics, college, engineering, all that. But, just as in middle school last year, I’m the “little smart girl”, who always knows the answer. I can sense the resentment.

Today it was a physics (AC circuits) lab over at Auburn. Sometimes I wonder why they require this stuff, but I suppose a lot of students don’t get all the hands-on activity like we do at the Hogwarts lab. Most of the students are 5 or 6 years older than me, since it’s a Sophomore class.

My lab partner was a Sophomore geek named Buddy Jeffries -- nice kid, skinny, shy, a little unsure of himself. He was kinda fumble-fingered, so I showed him how to assemble the circuit and test it, and make the measurements. We talked about filtering the AC ripple from a rectifier, and then I held up my hand to indicate that our circuit was ready for inspection. The supervising TA didn’t even come over to inspect -- he just said, “Mandy, Buddy, go ahead and leave. I don’t need to look at yours. I’ll expect your usual quality write-up.”

We nodded, packed up our books, and walked out. At another bench, one guy mumbled something I didn’t catch. I asked, “What did he say, Buddy?”

He reported, “The guy said, “Nothing succeeds like success.” You’re wearing that 3Sigma polo, and you have the entire engineering faculty eating out of your hand. The guy’s jealous, I think. Truth is, ALL of us are a little jealous. And you’re kinda scary, in some ways. Maybe that’s not a bad thing.”

I nodded and we parted company, while I walked over to catch a ride home with Cindy. I told her about it and she grinned, saying, “The polo shirt has nothing to do with it. But you gotta admit, we actually DO know all this stuff.”

I nodded, and she continued: “Mandy, it’s an easy bet that you were in the top 1% of your class in public schools, and moving you from middle-school to College doesn’t change that. You’re in the top 1% here, too, and you’re always going to be the uber-geek. Be proud of it!”

“As to the “scary” part, that’s mostly because you’re so obviously smart, but it may also be related to an action by Nikki, several years ago. A guy was attacking Susan one day, and Nikki kinda scrambled his brains, literally, with a ball-point pen.”

“You’re kidding me, Cindy!”

“Nope. Mandy, the guy was trying to rape Susan. Nikki kinda convinced him of the error of his ways, terminally, before he could actually hurt Susan. I suppose there are still stories about it, circulating around campus. The unstated message is probably: “Do NOT mess with 3Sigma women”, or something like that.”

We arrived back at the Community, and I noted Mizz Lee’s car parked out front. I went inside, nuked a pot of water, grabbed three mugs and some tea bags, and took them over to Gramma Connie’s apartment. I knocked on her door and waited. Mizz Lee opened it and I said, “Fresh tea, ladies?”

Mizz Lee smiled, and Gramma Connie said, “Come on in, Mandy, and thank you. We could have done that here, you know.”

I said, “Yes ma’am, but I have a question, for both of you actually. I heard a new expression today: “Nothing succeeds like success.” Sounds tautological. What does it mean?”

Both Grammas smiled, and Mizz Lee said, “The earliest version I ever heard was in the Bible. Your phrase is a modern version of the “parable of the talents”, Mandy. “For him who has much, more shall be given.” Book of Luke. But it’s also reality, and I’ll give an example from when I was teaching. At the beginning of each school year, I reviewed my students’ grades from the prior year, so I’d have an idea what to expect in the current year. Any idea what I found, consistently?”

I said, “No ma’am, but I suppose that the ones who excelled in English the prior year probably did well in the current year.”

She said, “True, Mandy, but I noted something else: The kids who excelled in math and science also excelled in English. The reverse wasn’t always true. But the point is, when you excel in one area, the odds are pretty high that you’ll excel in all the others. Have you ever thought of that?”

I said, “No ma’am, hadn’t had time to think about it until today, when a couple of class-mates expressed a little jealousy about me.”

Gramma Connie asked, “What happened, Mandy?”

I said, “It was at the AC circuits lab, and I helped my lab-mate assemble and test a new circuit. Everyone else was still struggling when we finished, and the teacher didn’t even check our work. That’s when I heard something, and my lab-mate told me it was “Nothing succeeds like success.” I hadn’t ever heard it before.”