Chapter 6

I told Gerry that we’d be eating at Mamma’s, and told him to bring his wife. Mamma’s was the best, and only, restaurant in Burnside North. The ‘mamma’ behind Mamma’s was a team of the Hopi and Navajo wives that ran the unofficial breakfast outside the school for the work crews and students before classes.

Gerry’s wife, who was having a baby ... Okay, I needed to calm down. We took a quick shower – me first, and solo, or we’d never get out of the house. I put on jean shorts and a T. I was hungry NOW though, so I went to the kitchen and threw Bear’s toasted cheese and tomato sandwich in the toaster-oven. It got to almost warm by the time the guys came out of the bedroom. We Bronco’d over to Factory 2 and picked up Gerry and George. G & G.

I sat next to Naiomi during the meal. It was obvious that G & G wanted to talk about chips and cooling fans and whether they could program an extra k-chip to handle the graphics and such like. Rock and Bear sandwiched us ladies. I had a huge porterhouse steak and loaded baked potato – ‘cause I’d burned a lot of calories this afternoon. G & G barely noticed the arrival of their food, they were so amped up.

Gerry thought there’d be plenty of leftover cycles on the k to handles the graphics. That’s what they were calling it now: the ‘k’ not even ‘k-chip.’ But George didn’t want to waste CPU cycles, ‘cause the ‘net was going to use them all up, once the k was on all the network nodes.

I zoned out of their conversation quickly and talked to Naiomi about her job at the medical clinic. They were handling lots of minor injuries due to the football season and the continuing construction. But they were all minor. They were thinking about starting up an ob/gyn/maternity section. GOD! There it was again.

SO ... what area of nursing did she want to concentrate on, I asked. OF COURSE, she wanted to work on neonatal patients. Babies, newborns. My left hand seemed to move of it’s own accord to land on Bear’s thigh. I swear I didn’t have any conscious control of it: it just wanted to rub about six inches above his knee. No higher, I swear!

Bear leaned over and whispered in my ear, with breaths that made me shiver, “If you don’t stop, I’ll throw you on the table and take you right here.”

My hand tightened on his thigh as I considered it. Dinner at Mamma’s would be out permanently, most likely, but would it be worth it? I withdrew my hold on his leg and returned it to my lap.

[Lexi, you know you’re still on birth control. And the shot won’t expire for months.]

I know, Red. But this Alexandra Bright Moon thing has lit a fire in my brain.

[I have already told you that it won’t happen for some time. That doesn’t mean in a few months from now. It’s years in the future.]

All right. I can dump some water on the fire, but you know you’ve turned me into a sex obsessed creature.

[Let’s get George situated in his motel in Burnside, then I’ll replay the theta tape for you.]

AFTER. I want to have the boys take me again.

‘Don’t you mean, after you take the two of them again,’ said that pesky life #1 voice. I ignored it.

I cut my steak into pieces for the last time. The rest of the table was waiting for me to finish, so they could order dessert.

I turned my attention to George. “So what do you think, George?”

“How many of the k-chips can I get, and how fast?” he replied. “I have to retool my production line, and I have to get a programmer for the new Personal Komputer. I’ve decided what I want to call it. ‘The PK – Personal Komputing for the 21^st century.’”

“Is tomorrow morning soon enough?” Gerry said with a smile. “I have a dozen. Well eleven, not counting the one I’m using. And you can probably use my prototype of the BPIO for the chip. That stands for Boot Processor Input Output. I store it on the external hard drive, for now, ‘cause it changes almost all the time.”

“That’s great!” exclaimed George. He cast a short look in my direction. “Uh ... How would you like to work for Worth Computing?”

“I’ve already got a job. But I’d like to work on the k project, too,” Gerry said. He looked in my direction, too. “I can’t possibly move to Denver. My wife is expecting. I have friends here. She has a job. I have obligations that I cannot walk away from.”

Whew! That was a relief. At least he’s not going to leave for...

“Suppose,” said George, “you do some programming in your spare time.”

“Sure,” said the other G. “I do that anyway, if I have some spare time.”

“So,” I said. Time for me to throw in my thoughts. “You write the program for the BIPO and get paid for it with part ownership of Worth Computing. It won’t be worth – excuse the pun – anything unless the company is successful. If it is, it’ll be worth a whole lot.”

“BIPO?” Gerry was puzzled.

“BPIO, she meant,” supplied the first G. “The Boot Program Input Output.”

“Processor, not Program. That’s what you said,” said Sun Bear. I looked at him. I didn’t think he was even listening.

“So,” I said, “Gerry writes the program, George manages the company that makes the computers, and eventually, we all get rich, rich, rich. That work for everybody?” I looked around and everybody had a big grin.

Okay. That was sorted out. Now, can we please get back to eating Mamma’s chocolate pie? That was my favorite; I didn’t mind at all if the others had something else for dessert.

Forty minutes later, Gerry and Naiomi were back in their home, George was safely nestled in his hotel room at the Burnside Lodge, and me and the boys had run the gauntlet of dog inspections at my hacienda.

[Lexi, how many times have I corrected your English usage? It’s ‘the boys and I,’ not... ]

Red, English is an ever-growing language. So y’all just hush about ‘me and the boys.’ I don’t go on forEVER about correcting your mistakes, do I?

[I BEG YOUR PARDON! I do not make mistakes.]

What about letting me call it the 3^rd of the 36^th? You could have prevented me from that slip of the tongue, but you didn’t.

[So, now it’s my fault for not preventing you from ... Arrgh! Benito Garozzo was correct after all: ‘It was my fault for not preventing my partner from revoking.’]

WHO?

[Benito Garozzo. One of the great contract bridge masters alive today. He played on the famous ‘Squadra Azzurra ‘, the Italian ‘Blue Team.’ In the play of the hand in bridge, you must follow the leaders’ suit, if you can. If you discard another suit when you could have followed suit, it is a ‘revoke,’ and you will be penalized. Your partner can – but need not – ask ‘No Clubs?’ (or whatever the suit is). Garozzo’s partner, Georgio Belladonna, another great, discarded on a club lead. Garozzo did not ask. If he had asked, then Belladonna would have discovered his mistake and corrected it. It was a famous example of taking the responsibility for one’s partner’s mistake.]