Chapter 27

Alan's Turn:

I feel like I'm on a merry-go-round that's spinning too fast to get off of. Not that I want to, you understand. I've never seen anything like this thing that's going on here.

Business? It's doing even better than I'd hoped for a start-up. I brought clients. Both Dans brought clients. Jason's name sits in the middle of some of them, and for heaven's sake, that Alabama utility company's regional manager was impressed by the Jason and Susan team.

He sent an engineer out to see them after they found a significant screwup in one of their substations. He watched them work, asked questions, then called us.

"You know, my people should've caught that," he said. "They didn't. Yours did. Your intern (that would be Susan) showed us the data you collected and how you insured that you got things right. My guys took the obvious shortcut and fell right into the trap. It's a good thing we didn't see a fault on that line. We could've mis-operated and lost a chunk of the state."

"People make mistakes," I said. "That's why we cross-check and test."

"Well, you people have impressed me. You're going to get a lot more work out of this deal. And pass that on to both of those that found that. Your Jason Ellerbee is impressive, and his wife doesn't give up much, especially for a novice."

I sort of laughed.

"What's funny?"

"I have three more that are just as bright, or brighter, than Susan. All of them just graduated high school this past spring. Two of 'em might graduate with degrees in two years without setting foot in a formal classroom except to satisfy their curiosities. One of them's too young to get her driver's license."

"Wow," he said. "You're serious?"

"Like a heart attack," I said. "That's why this business exists. Those girls are storming Auburn as we speak. So we moved here and opened the business doing what we do. And in two years we'll see how they fit in."

"Two years?" he asked. "Thought you said they just got out of high school."

"Susan and Tina were both 4.0 averages in their senior year, ACT's over 30, advanced placement classes, and both of them have interviewed and tested their way though their sophomore years. Tina skipped a year of high school after being forced to drop out. Came back as a senior and ran a 4.0 average."

"You're kidding."

"That's not the half of it. Like I said, the other two, one's fourteen and the other's fifteen and they did better than that. Both of THEM graduated last spring and they are graduating with engineering degrees in two years, too."

All I heard on the phone was him sucking a breath in sharply.

"You need to come by the office one day and visit. They'll be glad to see you and give you a tour of the place."

"It's an engineering office. What's there to see?"

"Certainly not our office. They have a lab. You need to see their experiments."

"Experiments?"

"They repurposed some power factor capacitors to make a big DC bank. They are building a railgun."

"Four girls."

"Yeah. They haul us in to talk to them about the hardware they want a little bump on. We make sure they're safe. But yeah ... high energy impulses."

"Safety! You're letting a bunch of teens play with high voltage?"

"Lord, Axell," I said. "In two years those 'kids' will be sitting in engineering offices or running around in the real world if they can get by the 'One size fits all' safety rules. They're bright, inquisitive, motivated, and they're soaking up knowledge at a scary pace. And using as much of it as they can." I paused. "Seriously! Make an excuse and come by and visit."

"You've got my curiosity piqued now," Axell said. "So that blonde intern..."

"Is the machinist-artificer for the bunch. Got an engine lathe, vertical mill and drill press for her wedding present from her dad."

"You're not pulling my leg now, are you?"

"Not even," I said. "There have been days with this bunch that I'm almost afraid to think of what could be next. The four of them are waiting on security clearances."

"What?"

"Security clearances. So they can at least get familiar with an R&D project the university is doing in collaboration with the government."

"No shit?!?"

"Because they're building their own version of a railgun in their lab."

"Okay. Thursday. I've got Thursday open on my calendar. I'm coming over."

"We'll look for you," I said. "I'll have to check to see which of the girls might be here. They're on and off campus on a random schedule. But whoever's here will be glad to talk to you."

"I'll be there."

I hung up the phone, looked over at Dan 1.0. "That's a client who's impressed with Jason and Susan."

"Poor Jason," he said. "Top-notch tech. Goes on a job, and they remember his wife."

"And he does all the heavy lifting."

"In more than a strictly technical sense, I'm sure," Dan retorted.

"I dunno. You seen Susan in the lab? She doesn't come off as the squealy delicate type." I watched them at work. I know.

"Do we even HAVE any squealy delicate types?" he asked.

We both know the answer to that one. It's a solid 'NO!'. Last time we did an oil change on the Cessna, I kept bumping into Tina.

"Look," she said, "I can get my hands in there a lot easier."

I'm glad she's not one of those manicured, primped posers.

"I don't think I'd ever like being that way, Alan," she'd told me once. "Even earrings. I would be afraid you'd get frisky and chip a tooth."

I guess that Susan's the only one of the bunch who'd ever shown up with noticeable makeup, and hers was a tiny bit of eyeliner and mascara. Her eyelashes are long, but light-colored. My Tina's were equally long, but dark enough to need no enhancement. I thought about Dan's Cindy and the other Dan's Nikki. Nope! Nothing, other than perfume.

The perfume thing was fun. They traded samples among themselves. My Tina was subject of a variety of enhanced aromas, along with my other favorites, freshly-scrubbed Tina, slightly sweaty Tina, and sexually aroused Tina.

"Where'd that one come from," I'd asked her last week.

"Cindy," she giggled.

Apparently my excursion into thought was noted. "Where did you go, bud?" he asked.

"Oh, just letting my mind roam. Tina showed up with a new perfume last week."

"So did Cindy. They swapped. Our wives had good tastes."

I laughed.

"And you have a dirty mind," he said.

"Nothing dirty about what goes on between a man and his wife."

"Uh-huh ... so that was our utility company rep on the phone?"

"One of 'em," I said. "Good report. And was impressed by Susan."

"Not Jason?" Dan asked.

"Oh, he was impressed by Jason, but Susan's memorable."

'I can imagine," he laughed. "What would YOU think?"

"I dunno. And I suspect that the girls will have that effect for years." I knew that despite the guise of gender equality in the workplace, females still had hurdles. I knew some who rode the idea of being a 'protected class' and some who played the gender thing as a way to shirk tough jobs. I also knew some who not only held their own, but excelled. Just like men. Of course, you can imagine what happens when one of your key engineers pops up in the middle of a project and cites pregnancy and the medical leave that goes with it.

I continued, "But he's coming over Thursday to visit. We need to see if we can get as many of the Sisterhood together as possible."

"At the very least, we should have a couple, I think Cindy and Nikki usually go in on campus on Fridays."

"We should be good. Might want to take a bit of time to organize things here." 'Here' is an engineering office. It's not exactly the sort of place that cultivates walk-in business. However, we do need it to be presentable. It wasn't far from that point right now.

I heard the back door open and the twin giggles of Terri and Rachel. The giggles died quickly as the door closed. We didn't mind being part of their summer world of explorations. As a matter of fact, if Beck wasn't home, we served as babysitters.

"Hi, Dad!" Terri said, followed by "Hi Mister Addison," from Rachel.

"Hi, sweetie! Hi, sweetie also," I said. "What are you doing?"

"We were hangin' around in the lab, but Susan's welding so she recommended that we leave so we don't hurt our eyes."

"Susan's right, you know," I said. "That arc can damage your eyes."

"It's interesting, though," Terri said. "I watched 'er with welding goggles. You can actually see that little puddle of melted metal."

"I'm glad you learned from it," I said. "But you need to be very careful. Molten metal is no toy."

"No, it's not a toy," My precocious daughter said. "But it makes things. Real things." She giggled. "Have you watched Susan? She does STUFF. With metal an' plastic, and it's like Play-Doh for real!"

"That's what makes the world go round, little one," I said.

"Dad thinks you're crazy, you know," Rachel said.

I know that. I and Sim, Rachel's dad, had many conversations. Sometimes he drops into the office. Sim and I exist in different worlds. He's in academia, facing a different reality than I and my fellow engineers (and yes, I add Jason and the girls to that number) face. He knows it. Even admitted it.

"You know," he said, "we sociologists, some of my peers, try very hard to make it LOOK like science. I see papers with all sorts of formulae and statistics. What I don't see is the sociological equivalent of Ohm or Newton."

I smiled. "Yeah, it's kind of hard to do some of this stuff on the basis of opinion. Not that many won't try."

"Yes, I understand that," he said. "But it's not like a few peer-reviewed papers are going to push your opinion of the validity of the Laws of Thermodynamics off to the side. Happens all too often in sociology."

"I'm just peripherally aware of that stuff," I said. "You have to be brave in that world."

"Or just go along to get along. Flavor of the month. Drink the Kool-aid," he laughed. "I won't reach the upper strata of sociology. I'm making a living. I publish from time to time."

I had a feeling where this conversation just turned.

"Alan, would you mind if I used the Sisterhood (yes, he used the accepted title) for the subject of a paper?"

"I suppose that if I had the right of review and sign-off," I said. "I'm awfully protective of our little bunch."

"So are the others," he said. "I talked to Dan. Cindy's husband. He's much the same way. And I would not use names, of course, but it wouldn't take much intelligence around this place to find out who we're talking about."

"What's the thrust of the paper?"

"Prodigies. Precocious prodigies. Cindy already sent me to talk with her middle school counselor. Apparently that was his thesis."

"Oh, yeah. Uh, Jim Hardesty. I've met 'im. She says he's responsible for cutting her out of the crowd. Plays a mean banjo, too, by the way."

"So I've heard. Cindy's got a DVD."

"You think we're a good subject?"

"I thought so from the first week I've known the bunch of you. You don't see this often. Uh, like 'never'."

"They're certainly the first I've seen," I said. "I was happy that Tina wanted to get back into high school when I first met 'er. Now look at her. And the rest."

I went back to my task. Sometimes it's not that exciting, you know. Tables of esoteric numbers, meaningless to most of humanity, there on my monitor, but I knew their import and had to therefore accord to them great importance and attention. I knew that at the end of the thing, I'd give that file to one or the other of the Dans for a reality check.

I knew, too, that Tina's eyes were good for proofing, although she was only just beginning to understand this stuff past 'a nine point one on that one means there should be a nine point one on this one' direct comparison.

But Cindy. She was in here one day with her Dan and I was bitching about the comparisons.

"Why don't you port 'em into Word and compare?" she asked.

"They don't format the same. The 'compare' doesn't work." I should've known better. I could almost hear little gears spinning. Her husband was smiling, watching.

"Then convert it to text. Write a program that strips the spaces that hang around after you convert to text, then have the program chop your text files up and compare, then output the results to another text file."

"Sure," I said. "Just write a program..." I knew it was possible when she finished explaining it. "It's been too long since I programmed ... And I wasn't that good at it."