Chapter 63

Terri's turn:

We have a new member of the community – Cindy's mom.

I know I heard a little bit about how Cindy came to be with her Dan – he's 1.0 – the first of the two Dans in the community, and a lot of Cindy's story had to do with her mom not being a very good mom. My Tina tells me that I am fortunate to have two moms that love me and that my birth-mother, still in California, did a one of the hardest things ever – let her child go to another because she was just not able to do a good job of being a mother.

I told Tina "That's sort of what Cindy's mom did, huh?"

"What did you just say, sweetie?" Tina asked me. I think I surprised her. (Again)

"That Cindy's mom let her go because she wasn't going to be the best mom to 'er."

"That's an interesting way of looking at it," Tina said.

"Am I wrong? I mean, you know how I am about the way adults think."

"No, sweetie," Tina said. "I think you're probably right in ways us adults didn't see."

"Okay. Is it something I could tell Cindy?"

"I think Cindy would appreciate you telling her that. But don't..."

"When Mizz Donna's around. I know. People are complex."

Speaking of complex, Rachel and I have just about put the finishing touches on our bird feeder security system. It's been fun. We've gotten a couple of guys from college, guys who work with Cindy and Nikki and Susan and Tina, to jump in with us.

"You're the pixie," Jared said. "I thought Cindy was the pixie. You're the pixie." He looked at Tina. "Tina Addison, this is silly. You're pulling my leg."

"What makes you even say such a thing?" Tina asked.

"Sorry, Terri," he said to me. "Tina, she's what, eight?"

"Nine," I said. "Almost ten." Rachel was standing next to me. My partner in crime, Jason calls her. Or vice versa. Rache's my sister for life.

"Okay, sweetie, nine. Tina ... you told me..."

"Jared," I said, "We're trying to tie together the targeting routines with the recognition routines. I want it to be kind of dumb about squirrels. ALL squirrels are targets and ALL squirrels get into the targeting and weapons control system. People, though, I want it to be smart with people. Search the database for a match, and if there's no match, then it stores the image and hits an alarm subroutine."

"You trained her to say that. She did real good," Jared said.

"Yeah. I trained 'er to say that. I don't even understand what all she just said unless I sit down and think about it."

"Can you help us? Tina says you can. Cindy says you're a whiz. Or maybe that's without the 'h' and she means wizard. Whichever."

Tina laughed. "I trained 'er to say that, too."

Jared sat down in a chair heavily. "There's a wormhole around here."

"No," I giggled. "We labeled all the known wormholes. There are none in this building."

He made a face at Tina. "Okay, Pixies. Let's see if I can help."

He did. We had a limited photo database from the security cameras in our office to play with. We pulled out some of the pictures and put them in the 'known' file and then sent the others into the program like they'd just come in from the camera feed. Got the alarm, the pictures went into what Rachel calls the 'look what I found' file where they can be approved later.

"Dumb about squirrels," Jared said.

"Let's show 'im," Rachel popped.

"Okay, here's what we have." What we had were several life-sized cutouts of squirrels, all done up on artboard backing, on sticks. Rachel ran around the yard with first one, then another. Jared and I watched the coordinates scroll around on the screen, then we plugged in the gun. Except it's NOT a gun, it's a camera with a reticle in it like you see in the movies when they're trying to show you what it looks like through a sniper's scope.

So now Rachel's bopping round the yard with the picture of a squirrel on a stick and crosshairs are tracking it.

"That's plumb scary," Jared said.

I giggled. "Watch this! Rachel," I hollered. "Invade the zone."

"'Kay," my sister answered. She took one of the squirrels near the bird feeder.

On the screen the crosshairs turned red, then flashed.

"That would be our firing sequence."

"Firing sequence," Jared repeated. He looked at me funny. You're nine."

"So?"

"What do nine year old girls know about firing sequences?"

"First person shooter games. Duh!" But I smiled when I said it.

"Gee. Tina, I give up. Somebody at the lab said something about opening a Jamba Juice. I'm gonna peel fruit for him."

Tina was giggling, and she laughed out loud when I asked Jared "You wanna work with me on a robotic fruit peeler?"

He laughed with me. "So what's the gun gonna be?"

"We don't want to KILL the squirrels."

"Nerf gun?" Jared asked. He looked at Tina.

"It's not MY project, Jared. You're looking at the engineering team right there."

"Oh come on."

"It's true," I said. "From the original specification to here."

"Saw squirrels running birds off our bird feeder," Rachel said. "Somebody needed to DO something."

"And we're 'somebody'," I said. "And the nerf gun has way too limited a range. Plastic foam..."

"Lacks the ballistic characteristics we need," Rachel finished.

"We're looking at a non-projectile solution," I said.

"High gigahertz microwaves," added Rachel.

"And you're gonna make that in your Easy-Bake oven?"

He needs to do better than that. "No, my dad's got feelers out. But we did print a lot of the mechanicals for the gun mount on our 3-D printer." I reached into my pocket. "Here! Have a kitty!" We made a lot of these little cat statues when we first got the printer up and running. We give 'em out to people.

Cindy walked in. "Hi, Jared. Have you learned yet?"

"I'm scared, Cindy. Very scared. And you got bumped out of the pixie slot. These two."

"Awww," Cindy said, "I liked being the pixie. But if I gotta get bumped."

I looked back and forth between Jared and Cindy. "Cindy, I don't think he believed Tina."

Tina shrugged. "I tried tellin' 'im."

"Did you make progress?" Cindy asked. "Jared's supposed to be useful." She smirked at Jared.

"Oh, yes," I said. "You should see. We hooked up the camera platform. We're ready for the RF gun."

"We're trying, baby," Tina said. "Those things just aren't that common."

"We could do that other thing," Rachel said.

"Yeah, the AirSoft pellets. We just have to add an element to make sure we don't fire them at too close a range. Can't have larcenous squirrels with six millimeter plastic pellets in 'em."

"And we have to have an air supply."

"Or we have to do mechanical..." Rachel said.

"Or a teeny, tiny railgun," I popped, watching Cindy.

"I am NOT giving you my railgun papers," Cindy said.

"You can't anyway," I smirked. "Most of 'em are classified now anyway. But you're not the ONLY one around here that has ideas.

We finished playing in the lab. I went home with Tina and met Dad there. Tonight's the night of my weekly phone call to Mom in California. If she's home. Or if she's in a facility and I can get through to her. It'll be later tonight because of the time difference between Alabama and California.

The last couple of phone calls have been pretty good. Mom didn't break down, either in tears (most common disruption) or rage (happened a time or two) but she was obviously on pharmaceutical help. I've cried before, because she's my mom, and I love her.

I'm fortunate that Dad didn't marry some stupid bimbo with her eyes on her own agenda. Yeah, I know about that. I went to elementary school in California, so I know about single-parent households and unmarried, cohabiting households and same-sex parent households. From a strictly biological standpoint, I find the last variety rather confusing, to say the least, but it is what it is, as they say.

I have Tina. Tina who will hold me when I feel like a shattered little girl who misses her mommy, even though the arms around me will be more mommy than most kids ever dream of having.

"She loves you, baby. She's got an illness that blocks parts of her brain so that she can't get the love from inside her to share with you."

Dad's not silent in this stuff, but Tina can just melt me – big sister? Mom? Best friend? Empath? I dunno. And I'm growing, so I'm getting a little bit big to be folded up in Tina's lap, but one has to have a place of refuge. Tina becomes my refuge for mommy issues.

I get over it, though. Cindy says I should write my mom REAL letters, handwritten, on paper. I know it's almost archaic.

"It's important, baby. Trust me," she said. "She gets to touch the same thing YOU touched. See the quirks and imperfections and the grace and the skill that you have, and that you take the time to do this thing to communicate with her. Beats the daylights out of email. Much better than typing it into Word and printing it out. Your pen, your paper. You."

So I do it. "Tina, Cindy says there are better pens than this to write with."

"Go ask your dad," she said.

Bounced out into the sunlight, over to the office. Very quiet, I peer into Dad's office. He's not on a conference call, his phone is idle (no little red light. I know what to look for.) "Dad, got a minute?"

"I have a minute for my pTerri," he says. "What's up?"

He's wary. I've gone in there and popped up some good questions. "Dad, talk to me about GOOD ink pens."

"I'm lost," he said. He raised his voice. "Terri wants to know about GOOD ink pens."

So up the hall comes Beck and Rachel. "I got this," she said. "Rachel, you come on. Let's have a lesson."

So when I write Mom a letter, I don't rip a page out of a spiral notebook. I have some nice stationery (Not 'stationary'. That's something that stays in the same place.) and envelopes and a fountain pen and good ink, and I write cursive.

"My daughter the dinosaur," Dad said.

Tina laughed. "That's ONE reason why she's the pTerri-dactyl. And remember what happened the last time you called a pterodactyl a dinosaur."

The girl from Auburn who helped me with my pterodactyl logo borrowed me and Rachel for a little exposure to calligraphy. "In days past, it wasn't only WHAT you said, but with genteel people, it was HOW you said it. Important documents were produced by people who connected beauty with function. They thought that the two were inseparable."

"Victorian Age. Where all that steampunk stuff tries to emulate."

"Why, yes!" Melanie squealed. "Exactly right!"

Okay, I pay attention to things and I see a lot of steampunk stuff and I have an opinion. (Tina says I ALWAYS have an opinion) "The steampunk crowd forget that function came before embellishment. And a lot of that stuff has NO real function at all, just somebody's weird idea of art."

Got another squeal out of Melanie.

I love college kids. Said that to Tina.

"You are right to enjoy some college students, but remember, they're people, and if you take them as a group, you find the same inconvenient mess."