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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 118: Cooper 38
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 324
Brian got to bed early, but not before having a light supper and arranging for a six-thirty wake up call and an eight o’clock cab ride for them to the job. That was early, but he wanted to be early on their first day. He told Tommy his plan.
When the call came, he ordered breakfast for seven o’clock and grabbed a quick shower. He realized belatedly that the only clothes he had were his jeans, the college T-shirt, and the flannel shirt, and while in his world these were fairly ordinary clothes for people who worked in IT, in the nineteen-fifties he was going to need something more fitting for the business world--not to mention that these needed to go to the laundry sometime. Breakfast arrived while he was getting dressed, but he tackled it and then made himself as presentable as possible with what he had.
Tommy arrived before the cab, and he noted that while her clothes were perhaps not ideal for a woman in the workforce, they were probably better than his, with a red knee-length skirt, a coordinated blouse, and open-toed sandals.
“You made the news last night,” he told her.
“Oh?”
“Yes, apparently when you were fighting that Sewer villain you said something like ‘Truth Triumphs’, and so the press is saying there is a new superheroine named Truth.”
She shrugged. “I suppose there are worse names. As long as they don’t call me ‘Miss Truth’.”
He saw the irony, and added, “Or ‘Missus Truth’.”
The cab arrived.
“So, is there a plan?” she asked him.
He paused to think. He had been musing on it, but hadn’t really reached any conclusion--but he should share what he had.
“We’re going to be there early, which I hope won’t be a problem. It will give us time to find the Research and Development department, and hopefully we’ll be there when the boss arrives. I think our best starting point is to very privately introduce ourselves to him as something like time travelers stuck here from the future who have worked with computers from our own time and have brought a few back with us. After that we’re just honest about who we are and what we know, and go from there.”
They reached BBS fairly quickly, and the cab let them out at the main gate. Showing their new identification cards they were quickly admitted to the facility and found their way to the front door. Unfortunately there was no one at the desk yet, but Cooper was undaunted. Seeing a custodian mopping the floor, he walked over flashing his I.D. and said, “Pardon me, sir; we’re new here. Can you point us to research and development?”
The elderly Black man responded, “Well, suh, through those daws theya, and straight down, cain’t miss it. But it’ll be locked until Mista Granville arrives.”
He nodded. “We can wait.”
As they headed down the hall, Tommy asked, “How long do you think we’ll have to wait?”
“Not long at all. Unless he’s sick or otherwise delayed, the head of the department is going to try to be first to arrive, since no one can start until he unlocks the door, apparently. It’s about twenty after eight, and I’d be surprised if he wasn’t here by twenty of nine.”
As it happened they only waited five minutes for a rather large and friendly-looking man to approach surprisingly swiftly.
“Mister Granville?” Cooper ventured.
“And you are?” he replied.
“I’m Brian Barrelmaster, and this is my niece Tomiko Takano. We’re your new staff.”
“Pleased to meet you. Where are you from?”
“That’s a bit complicated. Mister Keller arranged for us to be here, but I think it would be best if we explained ourselves somewhere privately, and that you kept what we tell you secret.”
“Some kind of government thing?” he asked, perhaps a bit nervously.
“No, nothing like that,” Cooper answered. “But it’s probably just as secret.”
Without another word, Granville opened the lab and led the way to a private office. Closing the door behind them and indicating that they should sit, he asked, “So, what’s this about?”
Cooper glanced at Tommy, but figured this was on him. The truth, and nothing but the truth, but maybe not the whole truth.
“Tommy and I are travelers--something like time travelers, we’ve come from the future but are sort of stuck here. In that future, I am a Professor of something called Computer Science, and Tommy is a student who is well versed in the use and functions of computers.”
Granville had a somewhat confused look on his face, so Cooper decided to fill in a few blanks.
“You will have heard of computers in some form by now. I suspect the work at Bletchley is still classified, but Alan Turing should have published some of his work. I know that I.B.M. is working on them, and will have something on the market by about 1964 that will put everyone else out of business unless you manage to keep up with them. By my time personal computers will be in just about every home in the modern world, and most of them will look something like this.”
Pulling his laptop from the bag and placing it on the man’s desk, he turned it on. Granville sat transfixed by the view, as the screen rapidly went through its boot sequence and soon, in about a minute, reached its main screen. While Granville was seated dumbfounded, Cooper said, “Tommy?”
She obviously took the cue, and produced her tablet, which booted up more quickly than the laptop. “This,” she said, “is my tablet, probably not as powerful as Uncle Brian’s laptop but more convenient. And this,” she continued, producing the smaller device, “is my cell phone. It’s a compact minicomputer that also connects through something in our world called the cellular network to something that hasn’t yet been invented here called the internet, a network through which computers all over the world can communicate with each other.”
Everyone sat in silence for what seemed several minutes. Finally Granville apparently concluded that it was not a joke, and asked, “What do we do?”
Cooper shrugged and sat back in the chair. “We’ve given you a glimpse of the future; the question is how to get there. You’re going to need integrated circuits to build these, but they’re still in the very primitive stages of development. The earliest people in this are going to be Texas Instruments and Fairfield Electronics, so you should build relationships with them. Meanwhile, I hope that Tommy and I can help move things in the right direction. But I don’t think you should let anyone know what we have or who we are. William Keller knows, but the more people know the greater the risk that someone will target us or our machines.”
He nodded, then asked, “Why us?”
Again Cooper shrugged. “We were lost here and now, and Keller helped us, so we’re returning the favor. Besides, we needed jobs, and working with what we know seemed the best choice.”
Granville stood and extended a beefy hand. “Welcome to BBS,” he said.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
