Chapter 75

Of course this got the little wheels turning in my head. I went to Sparkle's office and told her. She was surprised at the quick turn of events and she found me a workstation running Windows 2000 Pro with all the requested software installed.

I sat down at it and opened Word and Photoshop. I focused on the information in my memory and put my hands on the keyboard. Soon I was typing faster than I would have ever thought possible. I wondered exactly how fast I was typing and two hundred words per minute flashed across my consciousness along with a recommendation I find an IBM Model M keyboard since it would help me achieve about two hundred and fifty words per minute.

I stopped and told Sparkle what had happened. She had just been watching pretty much in awe at my typing. I knew I had and IBM clicker with my system out at the place, but I didn't want to have to go back out there just to get it. My memory informed me one of Sparkle's people was using one on the floor below and told me she had two extras. Apparently she didn't ever want to have to use anything else. I told Sparkle about the keyboard.

We took the elevator to the floor below and then approached Geraldine, a database specialist, and ask her if I could borrow one of her extra keyboards. She seemed slightly surprised I knew she had them, but was quick to dig one out and let me have it. I promised her I would take good care of it and I would get her a few more as a bonus. I took it and thanked her and went back upstairs.

As I was on my way I remembered I'd had to buy my clicker on ebay at auction. I remembered the place I'd gotten it from had several on auction most of the time. When I had the new keyboard hooked up I sent Frank a message asking him to check through the data from ebay and see if he could find the location of a seller that might have had some of the keyboards and get us the address of their warehouse. Might as well secure some if we could.

I went back to work on the interface instructions then. After a few minutes it seemed my hands were just typing on automatic. When I started on the images I was surprised to find that I opened Outlook Express and started a newsgroup message. I was soon typing in a binary file. After I finished about twenty of these I saved the decoded files to a folder and then opened them with Photoshop to finish them up. Before my improvements I could have cropped an image with Photoshop at best, now I found myself moving the mouse at a furious pace and making complicated manipulations of the images I had just created.

I had to stop after about two hours and go down to greet the new arrivals. Etta and Colleen had been with me until just now when Cynthia and Hanna had come to relieve them.

Seven was already in the meeting room with the arrivals when I got there. I took my usual place and she did the change of reference and got the line started. I shook hands and quipped with the newbies for about three hours and when I finished I went back to my workstation and spent another hour and a half inputting the data for the new interface.

When I'd finished I asked my virus if the drone had any sense of which of my followers would be best for constructing the interface. A list popped into my new memory and I put it with the information. I went to sparkle and gave her the happy news. She called Margaret to come and see my work.

Margaret was floored. She took the list of people the drone had suggested and went to fetch them. I noticed another bit of information in my memory and it was a recommendation from the drone for us to build about ten of these units to hold us until we could get a semiconductor plant going well enough to create a few wafers of the miniaturized parts.

I typed out another note to Margaret about it and headed upstairs with Cynthia and Hanna. I was hungry and my hands and arms were actually pretty sore about now.

Dinner wasn't ready yet when I got there so I wandered over to Nancy and sat with her for a while.

"What've you been up to Jack?" Nancy asked.

I gave her a rundown of my new found typing skill and how it had been used today. She grinned at me and I knew something was coming. I hoped it wasn't going to be painful.

"Poor little long dick. He had to actually work for a while today and now he's tired," she said, giving me her evil little grin.

"I guess you're right Nancy. It actually felt good to be doing something constructive," I told her.

"Well try to do a little something every day then."

"Yes Ma'am."

A little light went off in my head. Seemed like every time Nancy told me to do something now I automatically replied with Yes Ma'am. I began to get a little suspicious. Nancy noticed me pondering and she couldn't help but laugh.

"Why you little bitch. You planted that in me didn't you," I accused her, laughing myself.

"I'm sorry Jack. I just couldn't help myself," she said, laughing herself now.

"Hell I don't mind Nancy. You know I can take a joke."

"You won't have to do it anymore. The suggestion should lose its effect since you've discovered it," she said.

"Now that I know about it I wonder how you managed to keep from laughing out loud every time I did it," I said.

"It was hard not to."

Suppertime rolled around and we ate. We all decided to go back out to the house for the night. Seven had one of our lately acquired Sikorsky VH 3D helicopters pick us all up. It was one of the late presidents helicopters I'm sure most people would recognize. I wondered if this was the one Nixon left in.

When we got back into the house I was greeted by most of my favorite women who hadn't been to the hotel to stay with me. I got plenty of hugs and kisses and not a few little gropes. It was fun. Just as things were getting to be really fun a messenger from Clair, who was in the control center, came up and ask me to go see Clair. Seven and I headed her way.

When we arrived we found Kelly and Clair in the control center. Clair spoke up and told me Billy had just surrendered with the remainder of his band. Hueys were already in route to pick them up. I was glad Billy was no longer a problem. We had devoted more resources to his containment than we really should have. At least we had rounded him up without bloodshed. Billy was to be checked out by nurses as soon as he arrived.

I noticed information from the drone and focused on it. It was a rundown on Billy. He was only about three months out of the Army when the deaths started. He had been an NCO in the infantry and his main attribute seemed to be stubbornness. I was sure we could put it to good use later.

I was surprised a few minutes later when I noticed a message from the drone in my memory. It asked me to sleep soon since it wanted to discus something with me. I kissed Clair and Kelly goodnight then Seven and I headed back toward the house.

When I got back I went almost directly to my bedroom and undressed for bed. I lay down and was asleep almost at once.

"Jack, the drone thinks you need to make some decisions about our course of action." My virus told me almost at once.

"What does it think I need to decide?".

"I can report good progress is already being made toward constructing the human to machine interface and a working prototype should be finished by tomorrow afternoon." the virus told me.

"Good. How are we going to be able to best use this new device?"

"It will help you in countless ways. The main focus of your work in the area now should be to proceed toward manufacturing the miniaturized parts which will allow you to make portable personal interface devices all your personnel can use when interacting with machinery. For instance, once you have personal interface devices the aircraft which have fly-by-wire capabilities can be controlled from the interface without the need for the pilot to give physical cues to the machine via the older type input devices.

This will effectively put the pilot's brain into the control loop of the aircraft and after training your pilots should be much more proficient. This is just one example of how the new interface can help."

"I hadn't even considered such uses. In other words this interface is not only useful when interacting with computers?" I asked.

"It will be useful anytime a human needs to interact with any programmable machine.

"The drone also suggest you consider having several of your highly placed workers consider the memory modifications you had. It thinks they would be especially useful to Margaret, Sparkle, and Seven among others.

"It told me to point out you could use the new technology to send them alerts such as it sends you now via a message to your enhanced memory. They would also be able to communicate with you the same way," my virus told me.

"I need to think about it for a while. Is there anything else the drone wanted to tell me?"

"Yes, the drone wants your permission to move."

"Where does it want to move, and why?"

"The drone wants to begin moving toward an orbit around this planet. It will first move from behind the gas giant so it will be within line of sight of this planet. Moving into line of sight will facilitate direct communication between the drone and this planet.

"It wants to send instructions for modifying one of the large antenna systems already present on this planet. The modifications will enable nearly instantaneous communication between the drone and the antenna system and therefore between itself and you. It would also enable the drone to send large information files directly to computer systems here on earth."

"I can see the advantages there. Does the drone know of any disadvantages?"

"It will slightly detract from the drone's capabilities to defend this solar system from attack. However, there is small likelihood of such an attack. The aliens who built the drone are in defacto control of the entire universe, the only resistance to their control is scattered and is particularly thin in this group of galaxies."