Chapter 4

We arrived at the Whirlwind South Airport in good time. That was on the hand-lettered sign that was under the Burnside North Airfield sign. My ‘Whirlwind’ nickname had long since made it to the Navajo/Hopi lands.

Chas White Earth and his grandmother, Nanta, each had a house assigned to them by Sam Washburn. They were within walking distance, and Chas was also within walking distance of Gerry and Naiomi’s house. Uncle Funny Hat was due to arrive with all of the stuff that Nanta couldn’t live without in two weeks.

Nanta and Chas were going to go shopping for furnishings and such tomorrow, courtesy of Painted Rock and his Bronco. I think it was on permanent loan now. It was getting a bit long in the tooth, and I had Red make a note that we’d have to get some Spirit of the Hunter Chevy Suburbans for here and for the Wind River site. Also new vehicles for the Navajo and Hopi tribes. Also ... while I was thinking of it, why didn’t the Shoshone have tribal vehicles?

It was a trifle strange going to the Bashas’ Diné with Chas. Naturally Rock just pulled in to the first available parking place, but Chas didn’t want to get out and walk. He asked if we could drop him off at the entrance to the store, and he’d wait for us there. Nanta explained that he didn’t want to walk around the parking lot where there were cars potentially coming from every direction. That made sense, in an unusual way. So Rock dropped Chas, Nanta, and me near the store entrance. He pulled into a nearby parking spot and I pointed out to Chas that there weren’t any cars coming from ‘anywhere,’ they came from predictable directions.

He nodded.

When Rock met up with us, we went in, shopped ‘til several carts were full, and went out. I told Nanta to wait for us once we got outside. I put my arm over Chas’s shoulders and said, “Come’on Chas. We’re going to explore the parking lot.”

He slowly nodded and walked over to the area that was cross-hatched with yellow paint on the pavement. He stopped and checked both directions carefully – there were no cars moving anywhere – and marched quickly to cross the ‘dangerous road.’ When he got to the other side he got up on the curb and turned around to see where I was. I was a half-step behind him.

Carefully, we made our way to the multi-colored Blazer where Rock was waiting for us. We got in.

“There now. That wasn’t so bad was it?” I asked in as soothing a voice I could muster.

His hands were shaking, and he was breathing fast. Rock got the Blazer moving and went to pick up Nanta. When things were packed in the back, and Nanta was packed in the front passenger seat, she turned to Chas and said something in the Ojibwe tongue. Chas nodded in return.

I gave him a pat on the leg. We headed for Burnside North. Home base for Chas and Nanta. I guess that his autism affected him in ways none of us – except for his Nanta – really understood yet.

Red, has Gerry made a decent PC yet?

[Well, that will depend on your definition of ‘decent.’ By dropping your name, he managed to get some of the first 1024 Intel chips, and he’s made a new motherboard that will handle his revised architecture. It’s a big, clunky machine with a horrible interface that is all text based. And of course, it’s not MY definition of a good computer. Maybe he should patent the motherboard architecture and have someone like HP or George Hartworth, who’s just started a company in Denver, look at it. He needs someone to design the rest of the computer around the motherboard. I’m sure that with adequate financing and a revolutionary design, Worth Computing could be even more successful in this time-line than he was in the original. Worth is the child of George Hartworth. They’re just getting set up these days. AND we’ll have much better PCs for you to use.]

So, how do I tell Mr. Hartworth that we’ve read his mind from five years in the future?

[You don’t. Just tell him about the new design features of the PC. If he doesn’t want to do it, I’m sure HP or Compaq will love it. Just think of a 1024 bit portable – instead of all the ‘lugables’ of 1984. When he says yes, we’ll offer to buy into his startup, in exchange for a large chunk of his stock.]

First step is to get the motherboard architecture squared away with Gerry. We’ve got to get him to stop tinkering with spare parts and put something on paper that will sell. I mean, Intel has been selling the architecture to minicomputers and mainframes.

[Intel is going to sell it to PC manufacturers next year. They are going to start with DEC and Compaq.]

If we can steal a march on the PC market we’re going to make a shitload of money. Is it too early to talk to appliance manufacturers or the home automation market?

[I think you should leave some markets for somebody else. Remember your purpose is to get a bunch of money so you’ll have political clout, not to run the entire economy.]

Well, fusion power will certainly cause a major crash in some markets and a lot of out-of-work people.

[Yes, if, and it’s a big IF, we can convince people that it won’t explode. There will be a big downdraft in the hydrocarbon electricity generation businesses. But the electrical companies are still going to have to make electricity. They’ll just do it with less pollution, which will hopefully lead to less negative environmental impact, which we hope will be a world-wide phenomenon and by 3500 there will be a chance for the humans to survive. That’s part of the plan, at least. The political thing is just a Plan B, as you know.]

“Well,” I said to Painted Rock, who was driving the Bronco, “let’s head over to Gerry’s workroom.”

Gerry and his crew were in a portion of Factory #2. Gerry’s gnomes were taking apart some newly bought solar panels and replacing the electronic guts of the panels with our, new, electronics. Gerry was hunched over the shoulder of a female gnome, but he looked up when I knocked on the door’s window.

We exchanged a few ‘Howdys’ and some ‘How is it goings?’

I asked him the question that was in the front of my mind, though it wasn’t why I’d come. “What do you do with the old chips you take out of the panels?”

“We are now,” he started, “the fifth largest reseller of chips for solar panels in the Southwest. It doesn’t make much money, but I hate to toss the chips in the trash. I mean ... it’s not their fault that we’re making better chips.”

“Hmmm.” I was a little discombobulated by his idea of putting life into the chips. Poor little chips. “What do you do with the money?”

“Mr. Clearwater said we could do anything we wanted. So I decided to get a clinic started in Burnside North. Once we got a building, we got a full-time nurse to come out, then we got a doctor to get out here two days a week. Eventually, we ran a fund raiser out at the high school grounds. Naiomi started working there after she graduated. Now she’s thinking about going to college to learn about nursing.”

“Wow,” I replied. “That’s just terrific. You thought of something we overlooked.”