Chapter 30

Dan Richards' Turn:

When Cindy gave me the news, I started laughing. I was still laughing when I hung up the phone.

"What's so funny," the other Dan asked.

"Our girls are selling their railgun to the government."

"No joke?"

"Cindy just called from campus. She's bringing a Doctor Embert to the lab. Said she's warning Tina and Susan. I think they're over there studying."

Cindy's fast on the phone because I'd no sooner got the words out of my mouth when the back door burst open and Susan and Nikki dashed in.

"Cindy told you?" Susan squealed.

"About the university wanting to buy our railgun?" I asked.

"Yeah," Susan said. "Where's Alan?"

"He just left to go stir a pot on the stove," I said.

"Wow," Susan said. "I didn't expect this. I hope we can keep it until we get to test fire it."

"We will," I said. "They won't haul it off tomorrow, you know."

"We need to read the sales agreement, too, little ones," I said. Cindy's used to being my 'little one'. I think this was a first time for Susan. She turned all pink and demure.

"Why?" Nikki asked.

"Well, punkin," I said, "As much as we engineers want to exist in a world of the application of our science, there are commercial considerations, like, 'you wanna gimme some money so I can put food on the table?"

"Uh, yeah," Susan agreed.

"If Doctor Embert wants to buy your work right now, just based on your notes, then there may be some patentable and commercially viable technologies there. Therefore, we want to make sure that we retain as much of a handle on them as we can. If somebody makes money on your work, you should get a share."

"We should," Susan said.

"I guess," said Nikki. "I kind of got carried along in the rush. The whole idea that our little experiment was interesting to the head of a government research project, that's like finding that they want to display your refrigerator sketch in the Museum of Modern Art."

"Or the Smithsonian," Susan laughed.

All I could do was shake my head. At sixteen and nineteen these two were looking at royalties and possible patents and I harkened back to my own status in my first year of college and I was quite happy to see some B's on my grades. "Have you told Tina?"

"Tina's in class," Susan said.

Dan Granger was at my door. I looked up. "Dan, have you EVER sold anything?"

"Just my soul, one project at a time,"he said. "Dan, I'm as lost as you are."

Nikki's turn:

I'm sitting in Doctor Embert's office and we're going over the documents she could let us see until our clearances were finalized.

"How did you and your group arrive at your performance parameters for this capacitor bank?" She asked.

"We did the calculations based on our understanding of the characteristics. We have a known input, a high voltage source, working through a known lumped impedance, into our capacitors. For our installation, we made an assumption that our buses were essentially zero impedance on the charge, so we could map total energy."

Doctor Embert pushed her glasses up her nose and looked at me. "Who set up the measurement equipment?"

I smiled. "Me. Cindy. Off the shelf components. Analog to digital into our data-logger."

"Your data logger is a standard desktop CPU."

"Mine. I did that. My Dan says there are commercially available systems, but we saved the money and we build an input network on a breadboard and I wrote the software to gather data and store it in a table that I can drag out into a spreadsheet."

"Why go through the trouble?" Doctor Embert asked.

"I don't want to just DRIVE the car," I said. "I want to get under the hood, understand why and how..."

"I'm going to HAVE to see this lab of yours," she said.

"It's just a place we can try things. Somebody gets an idea, we talk about it, if we see the need, we drag a husband or two into the discussion to keep us from violating the laws of nature..."

"Hon," Doctor Embert laughed, "you and your sisters ARE a violation of the laws of nature."

She was smiling when she said it, so I took that statement as a good thing.

She continued, "So you're saying that you set up a means to measure your parameters?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "We compared our findings with our calculated expectations and where we saw departures we tried to determine what we were missing, either in our assumptions or our hardware."

"Did you have departures?"

"We certainly did," I said. "We learned that there are things to consider when you work with DC with rapid rise times. And we learned about dynamic versus static measurements and scan times."

"Explain," Doctor Embert said. While I talked about some of our explorations, she asked for names and the roles we each played, and she scribbled madly in her notebook.

"Are you drawing pictures of me with horns on my head?" I asked.

She smiled. "That would make life easier for a lot of people. I'm describing all the knowledge for which you should get credit, and from this list, I will have questions for Cindy and Tina and Susan." She sighed. "Cindy will be right in here with you. Susan and Tina are capable, but not like this."

"Tina's the organizer of workflow. She manages. Directs. Doesn't get into the absolute nutty detail of some of the things, but she brings the assets and processes together. Susan's our artificer. We can sketch up something and Susan can make it. Or call somebody that can help her make it. Or find out where to get it."

She smiled. "You enjoy giving credit to others, Nikki. That's refreshing."

"Why?"

"Some of our people are rather cut-throat. Getting published. Getting grants. Lining up future positions. You'll see a lot of people who will be into self-aggrandizement."

"Doctor Embert," I said. "I'm just a poor little Cajun girl who fell down a rabbit hole. Ever since that hurricane last year, I've been in Wonderland." I folded my hands together. "I don't really need anything. All I want to do is learn and do things. Job? Got one already, with 3Sigma Engineering. Publish? With a baccalaureate I'm good to go."

"Miss Nikki Granger, first, I'm almost of the mind that I need to divert you and your sister Cindy from engineering into pure science. Physics. Second, I watched a stageful of young adults walk across the stage last year and receive baccalaureates and who could not, a month later, hold the discussion we had today about the work you've done on your own."

"Thank you," I said simply.

"Just keep what I said in mind. I will watch you to see that you get credit for your contribution, but you're going to have to wake up to dealing with some real personalities outside this office."

"Ma'am, I had some dealings with people with all sorts of agendas before I ended up with my husband. They wanted to do more than steal my ideas. And I do appreciate you caring enough to warn me."

"I'm selfish. I see you and I see your sisters and it's like somebody gave me the Philosopher's Stone."

"What if we're not a match for the project?"

"You're a match," she said. "The only thing is that Susan won't have to be hands-on when it comes to fabrications."

"Oh, that's not necessarily a plus," I said. "She likes it."

"Really?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "She says running a machine tool is like Zen for Baptists."

Doctor Embert smirked. "I've GOT to see that lab."

"Got a flower sticker on the lathe and "Hello Kitty" on the Bridgeport vertical mill."

She snickered. "Susan's rather disarming for a whole different reason than you and Cindy. You two are obviously under age. Susan's, well, just does NOT look like a premium-grade mind."

"Cindy says she looks like the nose art on a World War Two bomber." I saw the question cross Doctor Embert's face. "The idea of physical beauty was more rounded, voluptuous. Here, I have some PG-rated examples on my iPad." I showed her a sassy blonde one.

"Yes, that's pretty close to our Susan," she agreed. "Still, she can be rather disarming. Hardly the sort of thing one expects to see while hearing about conductive rail cross sections."

"Yep! That's Susan," I said. "Disarming."

"Okay," Doctor Embert said. "Now, if we can get back to this data you're showing me here..."

Somewhere along the mid-afternoon, my brain was starting to squirm. Doctor Embert begged off and left for a meeting.

I was sitting on the steps of the Math building one afternoon. I'd worn my 3Sigma T-shirt that day.

A kid came over and sat next to me - smallish, brown hair, clunky-framed glasses, a little acne. Dull green polo shirt with a pocket protector and a selection of pens. Back home they would call him 'wormy'. "Hi. Waiting for your mom or dad?"

I answered, "No, my husband. Who are you waiting for?" I wasn't waiting for Dan, really. I just wanted to establish my 'not available' status. I was expecting Tina.

"My Uncle Amos. You're waiting for your husband? That's unusual. Why are you here? You look kinda young to be a student."

'Same questions all the time, ' I thought. I guess my tone had a little edge as I answered, "Yes, I'm young; yes, I'm married; yes, I'm a student here."

The kid flinched a little and kind of folded into himself. "S- sorry, I didn't mean anything. Just that it's, uh, at least a couple of sigmas from the mean. And I saw the shirt. I'm Albert Williams."

"What are you doing here, Albert Williams? Trying to meet girls?"

"No! I mean, I mainly came over because you didn't look bigger than me." He paused and pushed his glasses back up his nose. "I get nervous around crowds and a lot of people are bigger than me. I'm kinda afraid of getting hurt."

I heard an unvoiced "again" on the end of that sentence. I gave him a reassuring smile. "I'm not going to hurt you. Are you going to school here?"

He smiled. "It almost seems like a dream, but yes, I'm going to school here."

"Did you graduate from high school early?"

"Not really, but kinda 'yes'; I got into a little trouble and they gave me a GED early and sent me here to live with Uncle Amos and go to the University."

This kid intrigued me and I wanted to know what had happened but I didn't want to really pry so I just said, "Oh?"

He sighed a little. "Well, I'm from Squashed Possum, Arkansas. The town doesn't have a high school so we got bussed to Resume Speed. Freshman year was okay and I didn't get picked on too much for being the smartest kid in the school. The problem started this year when a kid named Mark Schumacher started going to school with us. Second month he started beating me up - he really liked to punch me in the chest. He was sixteen and as big as the gym teacher and as dumb as a rock; I don't know where he's been to school before but I think they just wanted to get rid of him.

"Anyway, after a week of that I went rummaging in Dad's metal shop and found a piece of what I think was lightweight oval culvert material except it was smooth and kinda springy. It was about the right size to go around me so I cut off a piece and cut out the back and smoothed all the edges - it looked like a chunk of a tire. I wore it under my shirt and Mark broke his hand when he hit me.

"I knew his buddies were gonna beat me up the next day so I made a couple of brass knuckles; well, not the classic kind, they were more like a capital D. I put two of 'em in the hospital and it was even money if I'd be here or in reform school.

"This is the engineering building. Are you here for engineering?"