Chapter 8

Today was going to keep me busy. After school: yoga, then Yong’s measurements, then dinner with Beck, her dads, and Bang-ja. I was in homeroom checking messages:

Mom:

>Ash, “no reply” is certainly rude. I suggest a canned reply: “This is an automated, pro-forma reply. Your message attempted no introduction, offered no facts, and was ill-mannered. Further communication from your address is now blocked from my account.” It states the facts and your conclusion, which is perfectly reasonable. I hope this helps. -KalashB

Mr. Mesrobian conducted the homeroom with his usual gentle cynicism but there was a variation today.

“Record. Gentlefolk, I ask of you help in a duty of mine. Will Roberta Roberts rise, please?” She did. “Reginald Roberts is male, he/him. Will ten of you gentlefolk rise and witness the notarization?”

Oh, yes, we all did, saying “I will.”

“Then please welcome Mr. Reginald Roberts among us.”

As one: “Welcome, Mr. Reginald Roberts.”

He said “Thank you, each of you, for witnessing my confirmation.” Mr. Mesrobian said “Mikhail Antonovič Mesrobian. Notarize, send, end. Thank you, gentlefolk.” He sat. We all sat.

“Anything else for the record, comments or questions?”

No.

“Mr. Roberts, please receive your schoolmates’ best wishes within the classroom. We do not wish to clog the corridors. Chef Bardy has been notified and you will receive a tardy slip in case of any delay.”

We gave him our congratulations. I headed to O-chem.

Where I was surprised in the first half-hour, a fair number of the class had ‘got it’ with chirality. I was retrospectively aware that Dr. Dalton had struggled, as had the class, on that and maybe quite a few had taken her previous lesson to heart. Bang-ja was with the bunch, nailing it. “You were right, I needed the ‘a-ha’ moment.” “Maybe I fucked it into you, or vice versa.”

“We need to think about that, not snark about it,” she said. “I’m getting these ideas, and along those lines.” “Well, I didn’t fuck it into everyone.”

She laughed and punched my shoulder. “Not like that. You have this way of ... leading me ... and I don’t understand it but you make me want to follow, and then you trap me and tease me and make me not cum, until you tell me to cum, or make me do it, and I can’t -not- cum.” “That’s strange and delicious, I want me to feel like that too.” She squeaked. “Really?” “I feel so close to you, I want all of you, Bang-ja.” “How ... can you say that?”

I stretched a little. “How long have we known one another?” “Since ... fourth year?” “About that. And we’ve stuck together because...?” “Interests, or something?”

I shook my head. “I’m coming increasingly to believe - rightly or wrongly, OK?” She nodded. “Rightly or wrongly, people connect in ways that aren’t articulable but still are real.” “This is sounding a little wack.”

“Let me explain. I first kissed my friend a week ago. When we did that I got this enormous wave of ‘This is ... well, my friend.’ And it felt like forever I had not known them THIS way but it was all them. Same with you. And I think somehow I am giving that back, though I don’t understand at all.” “Did they cum when you kissed them?” “Not that time, though it was hot, but the second time.”

“Ash, people don’t cum from being kissed and if it hadn’t happened to me I would just roll my eyes and ask about Sumi’s garden, but it did and I have a feeling like that. It’s like barriers fall, or are pushed, and all I can do is accept. It’s counter to ... everything I believe should be happening and yet it’s real, I feel it all over and inside me.”

“Same for me. I got sucked in, er, no pun intended because when you kissed me I didn’t guess it was going to happen, yet I had the strongest feeling: ‘THIS is Bang-ja’, it was all good and felt strongly of the you I somehow know deeply, and my body agreed.”

I shook my head. “So many things I don’t know, didn’t anticipate at all. I might have to ask Auntie Sumi, or someone, data-free, whether this is a thing she’s heard of.”

“I’m glad you covered data. It’s awfully strange.” I nodded.

English history. “Today in English history, nothing happened.” Mx. Gervais said they thought it was odd Ostara 3/11 had nothing going on in English history and told a story about how nothing written down in a book didn’t mean nothing had happened, people were still living their lives, getting drunk, beating their wives or husbands - yet no one seemed to have recorded anything or thought what was recorded was important. “Patches of that are diminishing as recorded history gets longer, year by year, yet what I hope you will take away is - well, suppose nothing that happened yesterday got into a history book. It doesn’t mean people weren’t doing things, it was merely judged by today’s standards and those can evolve just like anything. Getting at non-history, and clawing it back into the record, is hard.”

Bang-ja and I met just outside the cafeteria doors. “Smells like ... five-spice.” She was right, a stir-fry of thin strips of pork, bok choy and green onions in a brown spicy sauce. “They, or more properly Chef Bardy’s classes, do this well. Must be a tolerant recipe.”

We got the pork dish, rice, a small salad and mugicha, and we headed for tables and there were Ali and Beck at a four-place, waving at us. They rose, we joined them. Beck affirmed, we echoed and all sat. Today there were no plans involving all four of us so the conversation was on the subdued side.

After lunch Bang-ja and Ali headed to the glades, Beck and I were going to opposite sides of the campus, and the rest of my day was going to be difficult. I hadn’t anticipated that it might go well at cooking, where after we made some lamb biryani Paul asked me to hang out with him.

“Sorry, Paul, the rest of the night’s booked. Thursday I have nothing past my yoga class, I’m free between 1800 and 2000. Would that be all right?” “Happy to.” We swapped digits and coordinates.

I walked quickly to Maya’s studio, changed into ‘regular’ yoga clothes and started stretching early. I got into crow pose (kakasana) and hung out there for a little while, considering I could feel my hips opening and a new freedom in my trochanters. “Hah - this is crow pose!” I had plenty of core strength and my balance was good.

I came out and Maya was just about to her place front and center. This class was heading toward adho mukha vrksasana (downward-facing tree, or handstand). I could use that, it’s centering, and when she called it I stayed in for the full four minutes Maya liked to devote to it. Either I was getting stronger or I was wasting less energy.

On leaving the class I wondered where Raùl was - I’d not seen him the last couple classes.

I had to get a CVA to arrive at Yong Chen’s modest office on Lovelace on time, so at 1755 I was there, and she admitted me right away. “That isn’t a class you take routinely?” “No, I split my time between intermediate and advanced.” I nodded. “OK, Ash, please come into the chamber.”

It was an anechoic chamber with a strange floor, like flexible wood shot full of holes. The sound-absorbing spikes would also capture electromagnetic radiation, they were so black they had to be carbon- or metal-filled.

‘I would like you to go to the center of the floor, strip and put on these.” ‘These’ were a floppy and weird mess, the cloth felt like it had had zero strength and was as close to a puddle of fabric as I’d ever seen. “Uh...” “Everyone thinks that. They have to be that flexible. They are going to record millions of readings while you are moving. That is how my technique works. Standard measurers record static data; I record dynamic data.” I shrugged and put them on and yes, they were conformal but felt oddly prickly. “The prickling is because they are active. Just under three hundred thousand Hoberman mechanisms make up that cloth and they -all- react to, and help me record, motion.”

Yong Chen was pretty good about sequencing moves. She wanted to see where I was heading, too, and she asked for vrischikasana (scorpion) which I couldn’t do. She saw what I did to try it and I suppose the floppy garments recorded it.

I was done with motion in ten minutes, when she said she had plenty of data to work from. I asked her, while I was changing back into my clothes, how she had come to create such a different - and clearly equipment-intensive - way of measuring. “I can’t talk about the research that led to it, but once I figured out what I wanted to do I used principles from that for the signaling. All the mechanisms send out weak radio waves, and the reason you have to be almost constantly in motion is they generate tiny amounts of electricity to power the radios. Then all I have to do is untangle the signals.” There had to be major computing hardware in here or nearby, then. “Thank you, Yong. It’s been interesting.”

Good thing it had been so quick. Gretchen and Mom needed some help with their dinner plans and soon I was making the raw materials for table-side guacamole. I’d hacked up eight avocados and the cilantro, tomatoes, red onion and serrano peppers. The limes and oranges were in halves and squeezing them over the mix, then folding it carefully, would be all we did to finish it (well, and the pepper and a bit of sea salt.) I covered the avocado hunks with a mix of lime and orange juice and popped the works into the fridge. “Next?” I asked. “Set up the table and chairs in the gazebo, please?” I set up the indirect lighting, it would be too dark in an hour, and hauled out more chairs: people can’t eat properly in Adirondack chairs. We had eight of us, a big square table and chairs that fit nicely.

Anticipating the next directive I set out the tablecloth and the place settings and then “nice clothes, please, Ash, not dating clothes but nice ones?” Against the cool evening I wore khaki capris and a white sleeved top that had some heft to it, yet was fairly conformal.

Elizabeth, Bang-ja, Beck and her dads arrived all at once. Auntie conducted them out to the gazebo while I finished the guacamole and started ferrying it, and the wine, out. The wine was Faugères, Château du Météor, implying fish, I thought. And so it was, a long and magnificent ono (or wahoo), with courgettes and saffron rice. Mom and I worked the guacamole for a few seconds per diner, then we did ours. Auntie was host, she confirmed, we echoed and sat.

Splitting up a fish of that size takes some doing and it was Dad who deftly did it. There were a few pieces left but the ones that hit the plates were large and it took little time for the conversation to die down in favor of the food.

I’d got between Beck and Bang-ja and they had developed a Plan to keep me aroused. It worked, it was almost worse than dating clothes and yet I found it sweet and fun and let them know it. They had to take a couple deep breaths each, and they backed off. Interesting moment.

Once the dinner was gone and the wine disappearing - good thing Gretchen brought more - the level of conversation increased again. Auntie put her fork down, we all did so, and we rose and went over to the Adirondack chairs. Auntie did an informal version of calling the meeting to order: “There is something peculiar going on with these kids.”

It broke the ice, anyway. “As I understand it, they are communicating in ways neither I nor they understand, yet the evidence is clear. I cooked up a demonstration. I have a six-by-six empty matrix. I’m going to let John fill it in at the table. He’ll give it to me, I’ll show it to Becky, only, and I’m going to ask Bang-ja into the house for a moment with a notepad and a pencil, please?” Bang-ja took the pad and pencil and went into the house. “Ash, please walk to a place between the gazebo and the house.” So I did. Then Auntie showed Beck the matrix for one second. “Let Ash see it by touch, please.” She came over and I had it. I took the image in, showed it to Bang-ja and left her writing.