Chapter 32

SANDY - Friday, December 1, 1961

I woke up, feeling good with the warmth of Steve beside me. I snuggled closer to him, and, in his sleep, he put his arm around me. It was so warm and comfortable! I must have drifted off to sleep again, because the next thing I knew, the alarm went off. I gave him a wake-up kiss, and extricated myself, heading quickly for the bathroom. As I emerged from the shower, he came in, carrying two mugs of coffee.

"Steve, my love, that's so nice of you!"

He took a towel and wrapped it around me, saying, "It's so little to do for you, love, and at any rate, I wanted to be here to dry you off, after you've had your first drink of coffee!"

I took a good slug of coffee, and put the cup down. Tenderly, he patted me dry with the towel, paying special attention to my boobs and the area between my legs. I kissed him warmly, and then pushed him away gently, saying, "Damn it, I don't want you to stop, but we need to get going!"

Reluctantly, he took his shower as I went downstairs to fix breakfast.

We ate quickly, since I was eager to get back to the test cell and start checking the ECs for wiring errors. I did take a few minutes to make him a sandwich for his trip back. He went upstairs, grabbed his suitcase, and brought it down and put it in the trunk of his car. We hugged for a long time, although it didn't seem to be anywhere near long enough. Finally, he said, "Dearest, it's less than three weeks, and I'll be back!"

"I know, and that will be so nice! Our first Christmas together! Drive carefully, my love!"

"Don't worry. I'll be careful, and I'll call tonight. I hope you have good news about the machine!"

"I hope so too, but even if we don't get it today, I'm sure we'll have it nailed by the middle of next week!"

I kissed him once more, and he got into his car and drove off, blowing me a kiss as he left the driveway. I stood there for another moment, once again overwhelmed by how lucky we were that we had found each other, and would soon be married.

Finally, I got into my car for the drive down to IBM. I went directly to the test cell, and with Miguel and Aaron, we started checking the ECs we had identified yesterday. Almost immediately, we found and corrected a wiring error. I looked at the EC, looked at the logic, and exclaimed, "This could be it! It's certainly involved with the Y branch. Let's be sure, and continue checking the rest of this one and the others!"

We did, and fixed three more wiring errors. Aaron looked at them, and said, "Sandy, I see what's going on here! Someone can't count! Each of these wires was connected to the pin above where it should have gone."

"Does the EC history show who installed this one?"

"Yes, and I'm not surprised. He's new, and must not be familiar with the numbering scheme yet."

"How about we look back and see if he was involved in any other ECs?"

"That's a good idea!"

We checked several more ECs, but didn't find any more errors.

"He must have just started, and someone was working with him on these."

I said, "I'll mention this to Paul, and make sure that one way or another, we don't have any more instances of this!"

Sarah had arrived, so I asked her to start running all of Steve's programs that had been failing before, and the regular diagnostics. Everyone was holding their breath as one test after another ran without any error messages. Finally, after everything was done, I exclaimed, "Hooray! We've done it!"

I added, "I'm going back to my office. When we get a temp fix for the memory problem, we need to run Steve's other programs, the ones that pinpointed that problem. If the fix is good, they should also run with no errors!"

I called the manager of the memory group, who said that they would be over after lunch with the fix. Sarah had some other programming work she wanted to work on, so she would use the machine until they arrived.

I went back to the lab, and after lunch I went to see Paul. I told him about the problem with the ECs that Joe Klemp had applied. He shut the door to his office, and said, "Thanks for telling me this. He's smart, but there have been other problems with his work; he's sloppy with the details. Please document this completely for me."

"I'll do that. I'm very glad that we resolved all the issues with the machine; Steve was disappointed that he had to leave before he could see everything run perfectly!"

"As you said, his help saved you a lot of time. You've both done outstanding work this week! He'll be back next month for the formal acceptance test, anyhow!"

He continued, "I have something else for you. I'd like you to take a couple of days next month, go down to Washington, and talk to some people at the Federal Systems Division. There are two groups in particular that I think you might like, and they are very interested in talking to you. I'll set it up for two weeks after the acceptance test. Somehow, I don't think you'd mind being there on a Monday morning!"

"That would be fine", I answered, blushing slightly.

"In the meantime, we have another project for you. After your outstanding work troubleshooting Reaper, the program manager would like you to work with the Field Engineering group to review and improve their training program on the maintenance and troubleshooting for the basic Stretch machine. It should take about three months. Do you think you can handle that?"

"Sure, especially if I have a chance to use Miguel and Pierre from time to time as sounding boards. They've been in the field, and they've been through other training courses."

"That's an excellent idea. Pierre is going to stay here in the lab, but Miguel would like to get back to the field, and will almost certainly be assigned to the agency that's getting Reaper. He'll be here until it ships sometime in February. I'll have the material for you to start to look over tomorrow."

I called the test cell, and Aaron told me that the memory fix was being installed. I drove back over, getting there just as they had finished. Aaron powered up the machine, and Sarah loaded the tape with Steve's original tests and the additional memory tests that he had written earlier this week. As they started to run, everyone was anxious. We certainly didn't want to see another failure!

One test after another ran with no errors, until Sarah exclaimed, "That's it! They all ran, and there were no problems!"

Everyone gave a great sigh of relief and then cheered. Finally, I announced, "This has been a tough week, and everyone has done an outstanding job! Thank you all! I'll be talking to Steve tonight, and I know he'll be happy about this!"

STEVE - Friday, December 1, 1961

As I had hoped, the roads were clear and I had a good trip back to Washington. When I arrived at my apartment, I collected the mass of accumulated mail, took my suitcase upstairs, picked up my badge, and then quickly walked over to the agency. Murray was in his office, and waved me in when he saw me outside the door.

"Did they get it fixed?"

"No, but Sandy is pretty sure it's a wiring error. They were going to start looking for it today. The memory problem should also be fixed today or sometime next week."

"So you have the formal acceptance test in January, and the machine will be delivered here sometime in February. Isaac has been reviewing the space, power, and cooling requirements, and he says that we'll have everything ready by the first week of February. I've hired some operators and a couple of excellent programmers. They are currently learning Stretch and will be done with that before the end of the year. You're going to have to teach them how to program the Reaper."

"I knew this was going to come up. I've been working with Sarah Wilson for a while on the way to structure a training course for Reaper. We've done some preliminary work, and she will have more material for me in two or three weeks. In the meantime, I'll start putting together an overview of the system and a description of the various elements and how they can be used."

"That sounds good. Let me know what you hear from Poughkeepsie. Am I correct in assuming that you're going up there for Christmas?"

"Yes; I'd like to take the Friday before and the day after as vacation days."

"That's fine. I think you mentioned that Sandy was interested in photography."

"Yes, why do you ask?"

"My wife's brother-in-law died unexpectedly last month. He was a real camera bug, and all of his equipment is for sale. He had a Nikon single lens reflex that might make an excellent Christmas present. If you're interested, I know that Rachel - my wife's sister - would give you an extremely good price."

I was astounded! I had thought about getting Sandy a good camera, and the Nikon was getting rave reviews, but I was discouraged by the price.

"That's a $360 camera when new. Even at half price, it's over my budget!"

"Remember, you are due for a promotion in January, and when you've been in the service for two years, you'll get a pay increase. Both of those should bring you in at least another fifty bucks a month. I'm sure that Rachel would let you give her a hundred now, and another sixty in February."

"OK, that sounds manageable. Can I look it over this weekend or early next week?"

"I'll check with her and give you a call Sunday afternoon."

I went back to my office and pulled out my Reaper materials. I jotted down some notes on what to put in the overview and descriptions of the parts of the system. It didn't look like this was going to take me more than a day or two, and I decided that after I did that, I would review the training notes that Sarah and I had put together two months ago. It was past quitting time, so I locked everything up again, and headed back to my apartment, stopping at the corner market for enough food for dinner and breakfast. Tomorrow would be for shopping, both a trip to the supermarket, and to start on my Christmas present list.

After putting the food away, I picked up the phone and called Sandy. Sheila answered, and after I told thanked her again for her hospitality, she said, "Sandy is so happy that she's absolutely bubbling! Here she is."