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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 182: Cooper 58
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 139
The next morning Derek and Vashti went with Tommy and Brian. At Brian’s suggestion they got some time alone with Granville. Granville looked up, and then at the laptop in Derek’s arms.
“Another one?”
“Two, actually,” Brian said.
“So, what can you do for me that he can’t?” Granville asked.
“I don’t know what he can do, really,” Derek began, “so I can’t answer that. But, well, let’s see, I was in a world not long ago where they were working with steam engines and primitive electrical systems, and I built a Babbage engine for them. Before that, I was pilot of a spaceship, because I had reprogrammed their systems to make me first officer, and I did a lot with the computer on that ship and later on its sister ship. My wife was second officer and navigator. She can do trig functions in her head, and is very good at calculus, and once plotted a course that successfully launched a spaceship from a planetary surface, avoiding a moon, and intersecting with a comet. Sometime before all of that I was on a huge space station where I got a job in their computer maintenance department; their high-end systems used DNA-based processing and memory, but I mostly worked with the trinary systems. I upgraded my laptop while I was there.”
He opened his laptop, displayed the screen which had booted nearly instantly, and watched as two grown men and a girl stared bedazzled like children at all the toys under the Christmas tree for over a minute.
“You’re hired.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Brian, walk our new hires through the usual, okay?”
“Yes, sir. Follow me Derek, Vashti. Got to get you employee cards and show you the vending machines, cafeteria, coffee service, and rest rooms.”
As to the old stories that have long been here:
