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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 151: Cooper 49
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 131
The next morning Brian figured Tommy was right, that even though they had paid through the end of the week there wasn’t much point in staying at the motel when the house was closer to work. As soon as he had finished breakfast he packed up his things, used the scriff sense to check the room in addition to looking in odd places in case he dropped something like money or darts that hadn’t yet taken on that sense. He checked out, thanked them for their hospitality, and took his last cab ride to work. He had the cabbie drop him at the church so he could take his things into the manse.
The master bedroom was at the end of the hall, and had a double bed in it. He decided he didn’t need that, so instead took the third bedroom, across the hall from Tommy near the top of the stairs. If he needed more space he could use the study--or the attic.
He grabbed his duffel and headed to work. The short distance made it ridiculous to do anything other than walk--he walked farther to get from the parking lot to his office back at the college. Sliding his duffel under his desk when he arrived, he picked up the project on which he had been working when he left. He had forgotten so much over the years. In school he had learned all about how to design processor and memory circuits, but it was mostly obsolete knowledge--only a few specialists actually had to design those circuits, those who designed the chips everyone else simply installed and connected to create the computers.
He threw his pencil down in frustration. Flip-flop circuits, it should be simple; but the simplicity was escaping him.
Deep breath. Cup of coffee. Take a break. He stretched and headed down to the cafeteria; maybe they would still have a pastry from the morning. He lumbered toward the stairs.
Tommy caught up with him.
“Are you all right, Uncle Brian?”
“Oh--yeah, I’m fine,” he said unconvincingly. “I’m just frustrated with trying to design a better processor. I studied this years ago, but with the leaps in technology and my particular specializations, there hasn’t really been any call for me to use it, and--well, I’m just kind of rusty.”
She shrugged. “You’re ahead of me,” she said. “I know a little about hardware, but mostly I do software, and we haven’t even invented software in this world yet.”
He laughed. She was right; there was so much they hadn’t even begun to address. He would get through this; he just needed to relax and work on it. Besides, the point wasn’t really to build computers out of transistors; the point was to build one working prototype of such a computer that in a few years could be reduced to a few integrated circuit microchips that formed the core of a much more compact computer. Then they would have something to sell to NASA or whatever the government in this world decided to name their space program.
They were fine.
“Buy you a coffee?” he asked her.
“They have soda,” she said, “if that’s offered.”
As to the old stories that have long been here:
