Chapter 57

Susan's turn:

Sometimes I feel like a kid on a bicycle looking into the sky at a jet overhead. I mean, we're both going somewhere. We're both using mechanical transportation. But nothing I could hope to do with that bicycle is going to get me six hundred miles an hour.

I related this all to Jason the evening after that pair, Cindy and Nikki, announced their newly printed degrees.

"But, baby," he said soothingly, "You have a very good bicycle."

And I don't know if he's talking about my REAL bicycle, or he's talking about ME in one of those cute sexual innuendos he uses, or he understands the metaphor I'm using. Since his hands are roaming, touching those magical spots he's learned about me, I can infer that he's not on the sex channel, so he's talking about my mind.

"You are no slouch, my blonde hillbilly princess." I'm no hillbilly, but we go back and forth about Texas and Tennessee all the time. It's fun to play with words with somebody you love as much as I love him. "Other than math, when's the last time you really sweated a class?"

"Cindy and Nikki shoved me through the math," I said.

"I know that," he replied. "I have the same little bootprints on my own ass. It's so disheartening to sit there and look at one of 'em helping you understand differential equations. I feel like a housecat looking at a tiger." My guy sighed. "Look, Susie, love of my life ... If we weren't associated with those two, you'd be at the top of the stack. You're like a Douglas fir growing next to redwoods."

I snickered. "Since when do YOU know about tall trees?"

"Hey!" He snorted. "I'm from East Texas. We KNOW trees!" Now his hands got a little more mobile.

I giggled. "You know little Tennessee girls, too."

"Nope! Just this one!"

So, okay...

Our class schedules diverge the next morning, so I walk over to the office while Jason drives to the campus. I'm joined by the house elves, Terri and Rachel.

Rachel's the subtle one. "Good morning, Aunt Susan." (You can imagine the glee I enjoyed when I announced to my very Baptist family back in Tennessee that I have a Jewish niece. Of course, they've met Sim and Beck and Rachel since then, and it's just another bit of happiness, like watching Mom and Dad navigating the menu at the Desai restaurant.)

"Good morning Rachel. Terri. What's on the agenda for today?"

"Math," Rachel said. "We're exploring things."

"Yes," Terri said. "Use of mathematics to define spatial relationships, you know."

"X, Y, Z," Rachel added.

"Yeah," Terri pushed. "We still have that three-axis servo table, don't we?"

I'm thinking 'Oops! Terri's talking hardware.' This could be good.

"Uh-huh. What do you have in mind?"

Rachel stopped walking, so Terri and I stopped with her.

"Picture this," Terri said. "A targeting environment..."

(Huh? Eight years old, talking about a 'targeting environment?)

"We can assume that in this environment, all our targets will appear on a relatively fixed plane. Always somewhere on that plane."

"Oooo-kay..." I said. I was thinking fast.

"Yeah," Rachel said. "Like if the targets were all going to be on a wall. Never anywhere else."

"Now assume a point-discharge projector..." Terri said.

"We're talking about squirrels on the bird feeder, aren't we?"

"See!" Rachel said. "I told you she'd figure it out."

"We think that the servos on that table can change from X-Y-Z to altazimuth."

"Huh?" I said.

"Like one of those gun terrent thingies," Rachel popped.

"Turret," Terri corrected.

"Yeah. 'Turret'. Like on Star Wars."

"Eight year old girls are supposed to be playing with pretty ponies," I said, just to gage the rise I knew I'd get. "Not be talking about turrets."

"Tell ya what," Terri said, "If you help us, we'll put a pretty pony on it for you."

"We hear that all the time, too," Rachel spoke.

"Hear what?" I asked.

"Eight year old girls don't do that," Rachel's head bobbed.

"Yeah," Terri said. "Eight year old girls don't read these books, at the library. That's always nice."

"People don't know what your brains are capable of doing," I said. "I've never seen anything like either of you..."

"'Specially Terri," Rachel interjected. Rachel knew there was a difference in capabilities. I could identify with Rachel. Terri was closer to Cindy or Nikki. Maybe on the high side of those two. That's almost scary.

I walked with them to the office, a social call for the three of us.

"Hello, wife of Jason," Alan said. He was standing by the office coffee pot, stirring a cup.

I huffed, "I am perfectly able to be defined without reference to my husband!"

"Yeah, uh-huh ... Been Susan 'n' Jason ever since you two first met."

"Well, that's true, but nonetheless..." I giggled. "Besides, you need to be nice to me."

"Really? Got a reason?"

"I'm an endangered species in this office, an actual non-degreed person."

"We don't have degrees," Rachel helped.

"You're not even NINE," I squealed.

"I'm going to go take the official GED (Auth. Note: high school equivalency test) on Friday," Terri said.

"I'm not quite ready for it," Rachel demurred. I know how Rachel feels. She handles it well, mainly, I suppose, because she and Terri are inseparable. It's something else I can identify with. I never was one of those 'I'm smarter than you' kids in school, and I knew several who were. My daydream is to see one of those run into Nikki or Cindy one day. It always seemed to me that I had more fun helping people along. When I got tied into the Community, Tina first, then the rest, I found myself among kindred souls.

Cindy was steeping a cup of tea in the lunchroom. "Look out," I told her. "They're on a roll this morning."

"X-Y to altazimuth," Terri said.

"Huh?" Cindy said. It's hard to catch Cindy flat-footed. "Terri, what are you two up to?"

"Tell 'er, Rachel."

"Non-lethal area denial device targeting squirrels."

Cindy squealed. "Mizz Beck! Come see what your daughter's doing!"

Beck's voice sounded as she came up the hall. "She's with Terri and Cindy. World domination is within the realm of possibilities." She confronted Terri and Rachel. "What did you do with your free association time this morning?"

Terri smiled. "I'll let Rachel tell you."

"Mom, you're going to think this isn't learning, but we looked at some simple first person shooter games on the Internet."

"Why?"

"Your turn," Rachel tossed to Terri.

"We're investigating a problem."

"What problem?"

"Squirrels on the bird feeder," Rachel offered.

"And how do computer games help you do that?" Beck is taking the lead in home-schooling Terri and Rachel. We all pitch in, sure, but the actual ownership goes to Tina and Beck and their husbands. I know there are some people who use that 'home-schooling' thing as a cop-out and some use it to guard their children from unwanted influences. We don't. Terri and Rachel would be about as well served in a normal classroom as a space shuttle in the WalMart parking lot.

Ask a question ... Terri sighed, "We wanted to think about targeting in two dimensions."

Beck's not dumb, not by a long shot. "The world's three dimensional."

"We're reducing the problem," Rachel said.

"Yes," said Terri. The squirrels have to use one single path to get to the feeder. They can't get above it. They can't climb to it. They come along the top of the fence. Makes one dimension go away."

Alan was listening now. "Which one of you came up with that?"

"We both did," Terri said.

"How much help do you need?" Cindy asked.

Terri bounced backward against me. "Susan's gonna do some machine work. Dad..." She eyed Alan, "won't let me solder."

"Something bout my eight year old daughter with an eight hundred degree tool in her hand..." Alan said.

"We'll watch her very closely," I told him. "For heaven's sake, it's called a 'Princess iron'!"

"You're not helping," Alan snipped.

"She can wear Kevlar gloves. Heat resistant."

"And safety glasses," Alan said.

"Thank you, Daddy" Terri smiled sweetly. She's cute when she's winning. She wins a lot.

"We have ideas," Rachel said.

"I think Robert Oppenheimer said exactly the same thing," Alan said, shaking his head.

"Tina-mom is going to document for us. Cindy, you and Nikki can help me put the blocks together."

In those old monster movies, this is where you start yelling at the guy, "Do NOT go down into the basement!"

That afternoon I had my husband back.

"How was your day, my baby?" he asked.

I told him about Terri and Rachel.

"Charming!" he said. "When I was that age, I was playing video games and Dad was taking me hunting and fishing. They're designing an autonomous weapons system..."

A lightbulb went off in my head. "I gotta call Cindy," I blurted.

"Oh, lord," he laughed. "I did it again, huh?"

"What?"

"Triggered a totally random thought."

I kissed him on the nose. "Yes you did. And I love that about you. Lemme call Cindy."

I picked up my phone. "Call Cindy," I told it. Held it to my ear.

Answered with a giggle. "What's up? Thought you 'n' Jason would be..."

"In a minute," I said. "Got needs. But he said something. Have you talked to Terri and Rachel today?"

"Yeah. We're on the road with their project. Why?"

"Last month, that guy from the Air Force that was telling us about targeting, remember?"

"Yeah, and..."

"And he was telling us about that fruit sorter software and how it stored a part of an image of what the good fruit looks like, and..."

"Color, mainly," Cindy said. "It keys off of color."

"And then that facial recognition program?"

"I see where you're heading. But this is Terri's project. We need to let her get there."

"She asked about the facial recognition thing already. She knows that much." I shifted to my imitation of Terri. "If it can recognize a face, then it can tell the difference between a squirrel and a mockingbird..."

"Oh, god," Cindy said. "I feel like we're looking at the first caveman when he figured out how to start a fire..."

She said "And if we couple it with a search function and a database of squirrel pictures, it'll know when if finds a squirrel..." That's what Terri was talking about.

"How'd they get there?" Cindy queried.

"They played computer games, analyzing what they had to do to run the score up." Terri said something about seeing a high speed sorter on one of those 'how they do it' shows. So she had that idea..."

I laughed. "And it figures! I thought I came up with a bright idea before THEY did."

"That's hard to do these days. Those two ... Terri's bad enough, but she and Rachel sort of complement each other..." Cindy sighed.

"Cindy," I said, "That's how WE work..."

Giggle. "I know."

"So can you get that software? We might be able to run some sims..."

"We can ask," Cindy said. "Facial recognition software might work, too."

"Terri needs to get Nikki in on this. Nikki's doing software things. She knows some guys at school who might help."

"Let's not take this away from Terri," said Cindy. "She ... she and Rachel are onto something. They need to work these things out themselves."

"I know. It's just exciting seeing them at work." I looked at my husband. He was shaking his head.

Okay, it's time for Susan to stop fretting over two pre-teens capable of world domination and attend to the joyous practice of two happy people playing with each other's sticky bits.

You know, when I was still in high school in Tennessee, I heard all manner of conversations from some of my more promiscuous and less restrained contemporaries as they talked, sometimes quite descriptively, about their frequent interludes.

I remember hearing some of them use words like 'fun' and 'really good' and things like that. I also remember some who described it as painful or indifferent or something to be endured.