Chapter 3

Pre-recorded music was only in record form in 1958. Eight or the rare four track cartridges were not even around then. Phillips made tape recorders but they were the reel to reel type. There were some quality problems with sound and maintenance. There was a very noticeable hiss from the tape that could be corrected by using a ceramic head. These devices had not invented yet. Also later on, two ridges on the head were used to guide the edges of the tape so it didn't wander.

Another improvement would be the addition of Dolby A or Dolby B circuits that would process out most of the hiss. Putting simple circuits in with transistors and powered by batteries would spark a revolution in listening but only if other factors were right. More people had to want to have pre-recorded music and then they would buy the portable units. A unit could be put into a car but the car companies could get this made themselves.

I had worked on some equipment from commercial television stations. I knew that their present equipment was very poor from the standards of the twenty first century. I could not just plug in parts to do things better but had to actually make the parts and that was difficult. Even the very small head used to read audiotape was a simple but marvellous transducer that needed very tight tolerances.

Jane was sitting at the table with a pack of cigarettes in front of her. She had quit but now there were three butts in the ashtray.

"Hello sweetie. Tell me what's the matter."

"Nothing Jeff."

"Nothing? You know I'm not that stupid. Tell me. I need to know."

It took a moment then she said, "Where I worked, well the place was raided. The police tried to find me and even tried to get information from the rest. The girls said they didn't say anything but I'm worried. The house was never raided before and nobody ever bothered us."

"Jane, it could be a person trying to make a name for themselves or the police trying to find another way of digging at us. They couldn't hit my business and now they tried to hit you. They have been sticking to the framework of the law. We'll just have to have a talk with the girls to come up with a plan. Mr Mason may have to be brought in."

My mind was spinning with conspiracy theories but it was difficult to keep out even the wildest ones. My head was pounding the next day so I took a few aspirin. Burning the midnight oil did that to me some times. Worrying did the same thing.

On the way to school, I told the girls, "I'm taking a few Physics tests and may have a problem with having the same lunch time."

Susan said, "Well maybe you can have lunch with me?"

Maggie laughed. "Or with me."

Mr Flaherty and Mr Grissom were ready for me when I got to school. Mr Flaherty said, "Hello Jeff, I know that you want these tests. I was wracking my mind for a few hours wondering about your reasoning. I can see that the subject may be old hat to you but I get the feeling there is something more."

"Oh, there is."

"And?"

"Only a second Nobel Prize but you wouldn't be interested in hearing me talk about this."

Mr Grissom was coming close to apoplexy when Mr Flaherty said, "Is this in lasers again?"

"Not this time. It will makes some money but the market will be in the billion dollar range by the time I will be old enough to retire."

Mr Grissom burst out with, "This is preposterous. How can you talk of billions of dollars when even large companies work in millions?"

After he ran down, I said, "From your point of view it just might seem that way. The truth is that in the last few decades we have been moving ahead very quickly. It was not just the atomic bomb but a great deal of other things as well. If you were to plot the number of inventions and discoveries against years earlier you will see the difference. If you take a good look and see their importance in our lives then you will see that we are in tidal wave of change. To stay afloat you need to swim with the flow and try to stay on top of both the wave and current developments."

He replied angrily, "You can't come up with one Nobel Prize Mr Congdon. Every one I know of has been from a well respected researcher and well known in his field."

"I would agree with you but I'm sorry to say that I'm the only one in my field at the moment. Other people are tinkering with trying to develop lasers but they have not succeeded yet. I'm willing to bet that my patent application has been very well studied and a great many copies of my invention are being worked on in various labs around the world."

Mr Grissom said, "You think pretty highly of yourself Mr Congdon."

"I know I'm pretty good at Mathematics. You inferred the same thing yesterday. I know I'm good at Physics and you'll find out this today. Why are you attacking me like Mrs Dotty before you see the proof?"

Mr Grissom didn't say anything as I went into a small room with just Mr Flaherty and his armload of large envelopes. He handed me the first but I put it unopened on the desk. By taking the test for every sequential year I got more credits for university. The university could give the same hassle as the school was currently giving.

I said, "Sir I'm going to be accused of cheating if my marks are very good. I also came prepared if you will assist me in taking away some ammunition from my detractors."

"What would you like me to do?"

I opened my gym bag and took out underwear, socks, shorts and a 'T' shirt. "Please search these clothes for anything that could help me crib. Don't worry they're all clean," I said with a smile.

The man smiled back and looked through the clothing. "It looks to be just cloth."

"Thank you." I took off all my clothing and put it in a pile by my bag. Mr Flaherty didn't like being close to a naked boy but I showed him my arms and he could see that nothing was hidden on me. I donned the new clothes he had searched and I sat at one of the desks only after he looked for more hidden notes.

"I can't see that you would be able to cheat Mr Congdon."

"Thank you Sir. You may never be asked but it's nice to have taken the precautions first and I would not have to retake similar tests later."

I did the final exams for grade eleven to thirteen. They were slated for roughly two hours each but I was done all of them before first lunch. Mr Flaherty was going over the first exam as I completed the others.

"It has been a long time since I took Physics but it looks like you did very well. You whizzed through the exams quickly. Did you want to take some of the other subjects?"

"I'm not tired. Electricity and Electronics are a shoo-in from fixing televisions and radios. Bookkeeping is the same way. French and Latin could round out the day unless you want to test my weak German or weaker Spanish."

"I'm afraid we don't have anybody teaching those last two subjects though I know a few that speak the language. I only know some simple phrases."

"That's ok. I know a few hundred words and the grammar is odd in German. I once read 'El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha' in Spanish or as you know of it as 'Don Quixote'. I worked from French and Latin to read the story. I gained quite a few words but they are ones not usually used. I gave up half way through and read the rest in English."

The man said, "I read the book in English. The book was odd too in a way but still entertaining."

"Yesterday I chuckled to myself when I sarcastically thought of Mrs Dotty being my squire, Sancho Panza. Just picturing her on a mule as I charged with my lance was enough to draw a comment from Mr Grissom about my out of place smile."

The man in front of me was smiling now and said, "I can see how that could be seen as humorous."

A secretary came in as a proxy proctor while Mr Flaherty dropped off the tests and scrounged up others. In the mean time I had a conversation with the secretary. To her I was just a nuisance that took up some of her time that she would have to make up for later.

Another teacher came in later. Mrs Chisholm was my old Latin teacher and she came in to give me the test. She was a tough old bird but I liked her for it. In this time she had never met me yet.

In Latin I said, "Hello Mrs Chisholm. I see that Caesar has aroused your interest."

She paused then said in the same language, "Yes he did. You diction is fairly good. Where did a boy your age learn Latin?"

"I suck up languages very easily. I mentioned to Mr Flaherty that I spoke French and a bit of German too."

"He said that you know a bit of Spanish."

"Only a bit. I had to work hard at it without a text book and only Latin and French to guide me. To answer your question, both my sisters took your class and I just got second hand knowledge. Once I had enough, all I needed was a dictionary and some documents to read at the library. There is even a source of monologues exhorting the people of Rome to accept the ideals of various orators. The supply is limited and I can't get more until I get to university. My Latin is fair I think and I honed it reading other old texts in the language. Newton supplied his 'Principia Mathematica' then his Opticks. I have used them for my own work."

"I heard that you were very good at math and now physics." She was having trouble remembering the correct words in Latin or finding a suitable workaround. In English she said, "Why are you in gym clothes?"

"Mr Flaherty was kind enough to search these clothes then I decided to strip so there was no chance of hidden notes. Do you want me to do this for you too?"

The woman sat up and it was only when she saw my smile that she smiled back. "An evil and bad end will come to you one day Mr Congdon."

"That was not as good 'Beware the ides of March', Mrs Chisholm but the sentiments are noted and you are also probably correct."

She laughed for the first time in all the years I have known her. "Here do the test. I have real work to do."

I finished the best I could do for grade ten and then did the next year for we only had a two year course in this school. I couldn't remember all the words and should have gone through the textbook and then worked on the uncommon irregular verbs. Mrs Chisholm had the first test marked before I finished the second.

When I handed the second one in she glanced at it for a minute and said, "It looks like you did very well. It isn't great but it will be a fairly high mark."

"Thanks Mrs Chisholm. I'm getting hungry would you like to sup with me? I brought the usual bribe of an apple if you are willing to accept it."

She smiled again and said in German, "That is at the old rate. Now it is an apple and a plum."

In the same language I said, "The price of a good teacher is going up beyond my means to pay."

Mr Flaherty came back with some additional tests and I ate my lunch while doing them. The electronic and electrical were done very quickly and I only added in one place a differential equation that proved my previous answer. French was easier than Latin because I had a chance to use it a lot more. Grade nine bookkeeping was almost too simple.

Mr Flaherty asked when I handed the last exam in, "What about Math, History, English and Geography?"

"Math will take most of a day because I have to do all the computations. I would like to refresh my memory for the other two. Just because I like Republican Rome doesn't mean I remember all of my Canadian history. To make things simpler and perhaps more convenient, we can schedule one day only for math. Mrs Dotty and Mr McGuire can give me the final grade nine exam from their archives. A week of study should get me the grade ten the same way."

English was my worry though. Usually a book by Shakespeare would be studied in detail. Grade nine was as I remembered it long ago, and I had been studying the book recently to assist my memory. The grade ten test though may or may not have the same books I had studied before and I had not had a chance to bone up on the course.

Mr Flaherty said, "Assuming you pass with a high enough mark, what subjects do you want to take?"

I walked to my gym bag and took out the paper he needed. He looked through it and said, "These are all tech subjects. You need other courses to get into university."

"Sir, there I won't need any more after a few days. And that course in Industrial Chemistry is going to give me access to the lab. With a sympathetic teacher, principle and school board I'll get the second prize I was mentioning earlier."

"So that is why you wanted those other subjects out of the way?"

"Yes it is. The other courses are just general interest. Home Ec is at the bottom of the list and I saw you smile when you got there. This is mainly to help the school and male students."

His expression changed. "I can't see how that can be, Jeff."

"A male student goes to university or away from his family for a job and he has to resort to expensive prepared foods because he has no idea of what to do to make a meal. He can't even mend a shirt or pants. Besides my girlfriend takes the class and I have a chance of taking it with her."

"I heard in the newspaper article that you made that little girl a skirt out of deer hide."

"I did. She was over during the summer for a week and I managed to make the dress look more decorative by adding beadwork and trimming the rough edge just a bit. My love of history allowed me to make Roman Infantryman's boots and I used this idea to make her some better shoes when we were on the run."

"I hadn't heard about that. No tunic or spear?"

"The tunic wasn't needed, and the spear of walking stick would have bruised the moss more than my shoes. I don't know much about living in the wild but it was enough that time. It was the topographical map that really saved us."

Jane was a little better when we got home. Escaping the clutches of the police could do this and I felt she had a guilt complex because she had not been arrested when her friends had. The fact that they asked for Jane by name also made her feel that she had caused the raid and her friends grief.

We talked more of taking precautions about police and other entanglements. Already all the girls and every employee took some rape prevention training and this was extended to include harassment from the police and what to do if it could not be avoided.

Tomorrow promised to be a hectic day but I studied History and Geography instead. The girls were happy with me and, especially Paige, when I told her that there was a good chance I could join her in one of her classes.

Math didn't require me to change clothes because there were four proctors to do nothing but watch. Instead of acting like a twelve-year-old I went up and shook their hands and got their names. I dug into their history a bit and found that they had extensive mathematical backgrounds.

The grade nine final exam was simple but mistakes could easily be made. The same was true for all the rest so I had to work harder to get any particular answer. The grade thirteen portion, when it finally came, was in three separate fields, Geometry, Trigonometry and Calculus. Each one was worth two credits but students weren't allowed to take more than one for some reason. I took all three.

Instead of leaving for lunch, I found myself answering questions about my knowledge of math. I didn't think they liked the fact that I turned this into a class for all of us when I asked questions to clear up certain points I didn't understand well. I was frank with them and admitted gaps in my knowledge.

When I had to do all the rough work in calculating, I fondly remembered my calculator and computer. MathCAD or Mathematica would really help me if I could get myself on the newest dual processor eight gigahertz machines available when I left in 2008.

The four proctors were not happy with me for other reasons. It soon became clear that they thought I was going to be a fount of knowledge, instead I explained to them that I only studied what I needed for a particular project.

They knew a great deal about my laser but they were only interested in the mathematics and how it related to specific properties of light. They were interested in the measurements I used and how I hypothesised that they worked. They were intrigued how I knew that the measurements. The laser would not work if the dimensions were larger simply because light was not fast enough. My engineering showed that even another inch would cause the experiment to fail.

To throw a fox in with the chickens I talked about astronomy. Einstein's theories had been simplified and even partially taught in high schools. I had been taught at two additional levels but I could not understand all of what the man spoke of. I brought in 'dark matter', 'quasars', 'black holes' and a few other things found out years from now. I was happy to even give competing ideas from future astronomers to make sure these people here stretched their minds. When I left the four were arguing amongst themselves and I hadn't been required to give much mathematics to support any of the arguments.

The girls were waiting expectantly and I told them I passed. I didn't know for a fact but I didn't see any of the proctors jumping on any mistakes.

That night I made my own call to John Holtzman.

"Hello Jeff. How are you doing?"

"Not bad at all. I talked the school into giving me some exams and I'm rid of most of the subjects that would be too boring."

"Well that's something. Usually schools are too conservative to go out on a limb like that."

"Mr Mason told me about home study and I used that as a lever to get tested. I'm afraid that some teachers wanted to see me fall on my face and hurried to provide the tests."

"How well did you do?"

"Not all are marked and I think a great many people are going to go over the documents to see if I was given marks I didn't deserve, or ones I should have received."

"Was there something you wanted to talk to me about Jeff?"

"Yes Sir. My next rabbit requires that I learn a great deal more about organic chemistry. One project will only bring in money but the other will be worth the prize I mentioned. My problems revolve around not having access to some books. The specialised books are only found in universities. North Bay is not in commuting distance to any institution like that.

"Would you happen to know anybody that could get me into a university library? A student will do but he or she would have to stay close enough that I won't have some problems with the librarians or officials. I may end up staying either a few days to catalogue the books I need or a month or more to allow me to read the passages necessary. If it's just to catalogue, I need to borrow the books and study them here. The last method is much cheaper on my pocketbook."

"Jeff, you could stay at my home and my driver can take you to the university here."

"That's a very kind offer Sir. It would give me time with Corinne but as you pointed out when you came last time I'll end up devoting most of it to her."

I heard laughter. "Yes that's very true. I happen to know a great many people at the university. Some owe me a few favours. They can put you up for a month or two and you can do your research. Some of the favours they owe me are very substantial and they would love to find a way to even the scales a bit."

He added, "If this is ok with you, I can see who is most suitable. Cori will want you over at least one day a week though."

I said, "I like both ideas very much. The money making project can get off the ground when I find the right plastic and a partner that can take the ball and run with it. It may only require a small test bed and the products can be sold through a licence or we make a company to market the products."

"What kind of products Jeff."

"I really don't trust phones very much and the mail even less. But really the information has to be given in person."

"That is probably for the best anyway Jeff. Let me make a few calls and I will get back to you today or tomorrow."

"Thank you Sir."

Jane came over when I hung up. "How is my little girl doing?"

"We didn't talk much about Corinne." Jane looked a little sad.

I said, "To work on my next invention, I need to learn some chemistry. We don't have the necessary teachers or books here. Mr Holtzman has offered me a place to stay for a few days to catalogue books then find a way to borrow them. The other was to stay in Toronto for a month or more until I learn what I need."

"What about us Jeff? We need you."

I stood up and held her. "I need you too. The stay won't be long. We have the telephone and we can talk. As for holding and touching, we will have to have substitutes."

This was not enough and I took her up to bed. Soon the others came home but I had not finished with Jane. When she climbed as high as she could go Paige assisted me by kissing her to muffle the scream. This time it was not loud and she seemed to relax now that it was over.

Paige was next. I started with my mouth and kissed the insides of her legs until she grabbed me and put my lips where she wanted. Her fine brown hair tickled like the softest fur. Her taste was special because she was so special to me. Love was in the taste and so was my own subdued desire. It was times like this that I wanted my own hormones to carry me the way Paige was now being supported.

When her release came, I rode it out with her then moved higher onto her body. The feeling stimulated me but this was still only a shadow of what it would one day be. This didn't mean that I felt nothing, only that I did not feel everything I could. I moved quicker as I pinched one of her nipples as I sucked the other one into my mouth.

She built higher and higher as I kept her at the peak for as long as possible. When the time came, I thrust so I struck her clit and rubbed then did this again and again. Jane did the honours this time and held my woman as she convulsed under me.

While Paige recovered, Angela pulled me to her.

An hour and a half later I had to quit. My back, neck and tongue were too sore to continue. With a quick shower I started to get a jump on some of my studying. It was like playing in a competition and I was the first one to be kicked out of play. The girls, as usual, stayed upstairs until they were fully sated.