The Pike: Ships In The Night (11 page)

I was still exhibiting signs of a fever when I boarded the bus.  When I left Allie at the Pike, she had kissed my cheek and told me to have a pleasantly chaotic day.  My stomach was doing flip flops until I turned the corner.

I couldn't concentrate on my book as I kept going back to what she said about the nickname Sparky which the sisters at the bakery used for her at times.  There was something on her face that made my chest ache when she dismissed it, saying it was just something the guys at the station used to call her.  It was the first time she had volunteered any information about her prior position with the Seattle Fire Department to me.  It almost looked like she had a moment of panic, but then again, I'm terrible about reading visual queues.

Something in the back of my mind told me not to request any further information on the subject, but I can't quantify my reasoning behind not gathering more pertinent data.  Allie seemed pleased when I didn't inquire further.

Eve arrived at that juncture to give me some coffee to go, in one of the thermal mugs with my name written on it.  I believe she was watching the time for me and knew when to come.  Very efficient.  She didn't hand a ticket to Allison, but handed me one, and I found it an enormous relief for some odd reason that defying the odds of probability, the bill was four dollars and fifteen cents.

Even though part of my routine was altered with the introduction of a random variable, part of me that was at unrest because of the change was calmed at handing over the familiar compensation for my morning meal.  But logic told me, from exposure to the costs of the ingredients for food at Kusina Ni Tala, that they were losing money on the meal.

As the bus pulled up, I reached up and touched my cheek where Allison had kissed me.  I realized I was smiling as I stepped onto the bus and scurried to the back to attempt to read again.  I got distracted by the fact that I had somehow accepted a date, and I sadly lacked in knowledge of proper social protocols.  I needed to research this at the first possible opportunity.

I glanced out the window then hesitated and closed the book.  I made the observation for the first time, that the bus was analogous to the ferries in many ways.  Watching us moving through the city gave a similar feeling of being so small compared to the world around us, just like standing on the observation deck with Allison.  Why had I not taken the time to experience this before?  My book was closed the rest of the trip as I cataloged what I saw as I experienced the city.

Once I got off the bus at the University, I had to stop myself from hustling to the lab.  If I arrived early, it would throw my regimented schedule out of equilibrium, and it would take time to accommodate it and regain order.

Once I scanned my hand at the door precisely two minutes before the day was to start, I stepped in and allowed myself to walk at a more rapid pace to the work table near the cleanroom.  My colleagues all arrived precisely two minutes later in a group since they all lived in the city and carpooled.

I smiled at their punctuality from where I was working on my equations.  They were never late, I know because I made sure to be here two minutes before everyone once our team was assembled.  It wouldn't do for the head of the project to not be the first to arrive.

My entire team was made up of the most brilliant minds who were ostracized from our own contemporaries because of our social awkwardness and inability to mesh with the general populace.  But I found my team refreshing and logical to a fault and I had a certain pride in them, knowing that other teams had overlooked the crème of the crop.  They were my extended family that were just as odd as I was.

I smiled and greeted them, “Hi, boys.”

They waved and Lenny said, “Good morning Schrodie.”

I looked over at Jamal. “Can you fire up Maggie please and prepare for a test?”

The thin Jamaican man nodded and made a beeline toward the cleanroom as Hachi started powering up our other equipment for the day.  I was finding it hard to contain the excitement building inside me.

I handed two pages of corrected algorithms to Lenny and said, “Can you please feed this to our Maggie?”

He and Carl looked over the pages that he held. And Carl narrowed his eyes. “But this is just a rehash of basic relativistic chaos calcul...”

He trailed off in mid-word and his eyes snapped wide when Lenny stabbed his fingers at a portion of the new calculations as he blurted out, “But when you apply recurrence plots to the results... Schrodie, this is genius.  We've been approaching the problem all wrong the past few months.”

He looked up from the papers with a look that made me heat up in embarrassment.  It was a look of pride and wonder I think.  I shrugged and stated, “It was Allison's idea.  She told me to embrace the chaos... and well...”  I pointed at the papers.

The men in the room stopped, their faces turning red, Jamal was already suiting up in the air curtain of the cleanroom so didn't know what we were discussing.

Hachi joined us and looked at the calculations and looked dumbstruck.

Carl asked, “Allison?  As in...”  He held one hand up high to indicate height then made a muscle with his other arm.  They all had the same goofy look on their faces I've seen in the mirror when I think of Allie.

I nodded, not used to new feelings I couldn't identify.  The boys were attracted to her, and that made me feel... I don't know, possessive?  Well, of course, they were attracted to her, I mean who wouldn't be?  And we were all nerdy geeks stuck in a lab.  Weren't nerdy geeks supposed to like girls?

I felt one of those warm waves rolling through me and said, “Lenny, feed our Maggie.  Hachi, can you schedule an appointment for me with the campus physician for Monday, I believe I'm coming down with something, and it would be inconvenient if I were to be sick at this juncture of our research.”

Carl went to monitor Jamal as the others both nodded and went off to perform their tasks.

I felt excitement fluttering in my belly in anticipation of trying out the new algorithm.  The feeling was familiar.  Like when... Allie was around.  Was I excited to be close to her?  Something to ponder and gather more supporting evidence of.

As Lenny worked, Carl helped him develop a new predictive matrix for the recurrence plots.  I decided to employ their expertise in a field I had no experience in.  I said out loud to nobody in particular.  “You're all boys, right?  And have experience dating women?”

They all froze.  Had I broken some social protocol I wasn't aware of?  Was speaking of sexuality and coupling a taboo subject?  They all seemed almost embarrassed.  Jamal was first to reply over the intercom, “Well sort of...”

Carl waffled his hand in a non-committal gesture as Hachi said as he looked at his feet, “We're sort of... well, women don't... guys like us...”

Lenny said brightly, “I've researched it extensively for when I find myself in a situation where the knowledge would be useful.”

Oh.  They seemed to be as uninformed as I was.  Was it that hard to date women?  I had never considered it until Allison said the barbecue she invited me to was a date.

I made a decision.  We had five of the brightest minds in the nation here in this lab, I'm sure we could gather the appropriate data so that I didn't make a fool of myself at the barbecue.  We couldn't do anything until the probability matrix was input, and that was easy, mindless work so we could multitask.

I said, “I have a side project for us then today.  Allison has asked me on a date for this coming Sunday, and I do not have the appropriate data nor know the proper variables involved.”

I looked at Jamal and Carl.  “Can you two look up the social protocols for dating?” Then I turned to Lenny.  “As the one with the most research into the subject, I'll need a correlated list of reference materials I can study before Sunday.”  Then I looked at Hachi.  “Can you research non-binary pairings to see if they differ from binary pairings?”

I paused when I realized they were all just looking at me.  I felt my cheeks warm, and I looked down at my shoes and started wringing my hands as I asked, “What?”

Lenny said with a tone of awe in his voice, “One of us has a date... with a girl.”

I tried to get the focus off of me and said, “We may have the breakthrough we have been working toward for months gentlemen.”

It seems my attempt at distraction was unsuccessful when Hachi added, a big smile on his face, “A real date.”

Jamal chuckled and said, “Yes, a breakthrough indeed.”

I started shifting from foot to foot and pushed my hair back over my shoulders and then clapped my hands in a herding gesture. “Come on boys, let's get to it.”

Lenny was first to move toward his workstation, saying with certainty in his voice, “On it Schrodie.  This is going to be the most successful date ever.”

I grinned as they all started on our new line of research with enthusiasm.  How hard could it be?  We were quantum physicists after all.

I pulled up a search engine on my terminal and typed in 'instruction videos non-binary pairings'.  This gave me nothing in the realm of dating.  What was the layman's term for it?  Gay?  No... lesbian.  Ok, let's try 'videos lesbian'.

A few seconds later I was swallowing hard, and I felt embarrassed for some reason as I blinked at the results.  “Oh, my.”  But I hadn't typed coitus... so why did these...

I exhaled loudly as I tried to add more detailed parameters to my search as I tried to determine why I was feeling flush.  Ah, here we are, 'lesbian dating' had much more relevant data.  I looked at the first result, 'How to Date Girls: 10 Simple Rules for Properly Courting a Lesbian'.  This could be useful.

I muttered a few minutes and thirty websites later, “Why does it seem that romance is so difficult?  You would think it should have a logical structure, but nothing seems to make sense, and what one group of data suggests is disproven with the next.”

Hachi growled back in agreement, “Emotions are frustrating.  They can't seem to be quantified and are infinitely variable.”

Lenny said, “Maybe for all of you.  I almost had a date once.”

I cocked an eyebrow at the man.  “Really braggart?  Then share what you've found so far, oh wise one.”

He hit a key on his terminal, and the printer started up.  He handed me the sheet that was printed.  He said, “Viola a list of what I take to be cinematic entertainment documentaries on dating.  The movies are all available online for streaming.”

I looked at the list. “Great work!”  Now I'd have a frame of reference to start with.  I looked at the list.  Sixteen Candles, Letters to Juliette, Footloose, Never Been Kissed, and about a dozen others.

He seemed to beam at the compliment as the others handed their research over to me.  See?  How hard can dating possibly be when I had some our greatest minds working on it?

Len pause when his terminal chimed.  His eyes lit in excitement.  “We're good to go here, boss.”

Now that we had successfully solved one problem, it was time to see if we had finally made the breakthrough we had been working so hard for.

I stepped over to Maggie's terminal, my boys crowded around the screen.  I looked through the glass at our baby and said to her as I entered an equation, “Come on Mags, show us what you got.”

I noted we were all holding our breaths collectively as I hit enter.  We got back the expected results before we exhaled.  Great, still at over ninety-nine percent predictive results, the new matrix hadn't compromised our prior work.

We all looked around sharing relieved smiled.  And I typed in another request.  A moment later Maggie spit out, 1, 11, 13, and 143.  We again exhaled in relief.  Alright, she could still factorize 143.  I asked the men,  “Let's try 56,153 shall we?”  It was the largest number ever successfully factorized by a quantum computer, Nagasuma had done it last month.  Though they still can't prove they are using quantum annealing instead of simulated annealing, just like Sky Computing.

Even our competitors agree our results utilize quantum annealing, though we are the butt of all jokes since we have only been able to factorize 143.  That is just fine, we know we are scaring the hell out of the smug jerks.  Once we break the barrier we have hit, then it will make all of their advancements irrelevant.

The police have already caught one person trying to hack the University to get to our research.  We know one of them is behind it but the woman responsible for the breach won't say who hired her.  I hate industrial espionage.

I took a deep breath, we all shared a look, and I hit enter.  A moment later it felt like my heart had stopped as I quickly went through the results in my head.  I knew them by heart as I read them out loud as I started to hyperventilate.  I was feeling lightheaded as I heard someone whisper as I ran it again and again.  “It's right.”  I knew that voice... it was me.

I leveled my breathing and looked at the men who looked pale, even Jamal.  I typed something in, and they looked at me incredulously.  I said, “I have to know.”  They nodded.

I was going so far beyond anything ever tried on a quantum computer.  I asked in a tiny voice as I typed, “Mags, can you factor 103,413 for us?”  They knew why I chose it, there were only four possible factors and we all knew them by rote.

I hit enter.