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Stories from the Verse
In Verse Proportion
Chapter 110: Slade 203
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 211
By this point the engineering department had so many of Slade’s balls in the air that he was having trouble keeping track of them. It was made more complicated by the fact that the birds did not look all that different from each other, to him, and the more projects were running the more birds expected to be recognized. He envied Lauren’s ability to distinguish the birds. She gave them names, and used the names she had created; he was trying to learn their names in their own language, and that was not always so easy. More than once a bird was offended because he got a note wrong in trying to sing its name. He always tried to blame it on his own difficulty with their language, but as often as not it was because he had misidentified the bird.
In the main, though, he tried to keep the various professors clearly identified in his mind, and he could remember a few of his swordsmanship students. When engineering students came to him, though, his first question was usually, “Which project are you?”
That only didn’t work once, when the answer was, “I’m from the Dean’s office, and he wants to know whether he can try your shower.” He knew this meant cleaning feathers from the drain basket, but hey, the Dean was responsible for building the house at all, and even if the money for it was more than paid from Slade’s inventions, he didn’t really feel he could refuse.
“Certainly,” he replied. “Make arrangements with Shella for when. And he should bring his own soap and towels.”
Otherwise, the new inventions were inching forward. He knew it would be a slow process. After all, each invention was a new level of complexity. In fact, when they were working on the guns he suggested that they invent what he called “blanks”, bullet cups with powder and wax that would explode but not fire bullets, to test the mechanisms slightly more safely. It seemed a good idea to the engineers.
So they kept him busy with questions and updates.
He wondered if this was how Edison did it.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #452: Versers Ready. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
