Smarter

by Laurence E. Dahners

“No, I’d just forgotten how stunning you are. It must be an odd experience having people react to you so differently as beautiful Ell and plain Ellen, huh?”

  Ell flushed. “I don’t think I’m all that beautiful. But people sure do react differently to the two versions of me. But I think that’s mostly because I’m kind of famous as Ell, don’t you?”

  He laughed, “Sure, that too. But you are truly beautiful and it’s hard not staring when you’re in the room. Just slap me if you see me gaping OK?”

  Ell laughed. Somehow his honest admission made his intent gaze less creepy.

  They went to the patent attorney’s office and went over the device with Miller until he understood it pretty well. Then they worked out a patent strategy. Smythe paid the usual patent fees plus an extra $10,000 if the attorney had it fully submitted by the close of business the next day. Between meetings they strategized their disclosure to possible existing corporations and to some venture capitalists. On Miller’s advice, Smythe hired a full time attorney named Exeter who specialized in IPOs to arrange and negotiate with possible corporate partners. The next morning Smythe cancelled a class so that they could meet with Miller again, who’d worked until late at night on the patent application. They went over it carefully to make sure it covered all possible uses.

  After the patent had been electronically submitted, Ell flew back to Raleigh as Ellen Symonds with their plan established to meet with possible corporate partners the week after Thanksgiving.

  Since her mother wouldn’t be able to send her broken car for Ell as usual, Ell rented a car for a week at the RDU airport. Then she went out shopping for some business clothing to wear at the negotiations to come. She had to take off her “fat pants” in the dressing rooms to try stuff on, which felt kinda weird. She also bought some other new clothes for her Ell Donsaii persona because that persona hadn’t worn much besides uniforms for a couple of years now. Then, since it was Friday, she dropped by West 87 before heading back to Morehead City.

  When she walked in, none of the gang was there and she wondered if they had some other event that night. She went to the bar and ordered a Coke then went over to watch some of the pool players. “Care for a game?” a low voice rumbled beside her.

  Ell looked up. It was Silent Joe! She saw Bill standing, holding a pool cue at a table across the room. Silent slowly winked at her. Bemused that Silent Joe seemed to be the only man who ever noticed her as “Ellen,” Ell shrugged and said “OK.”

  They walked over to the table that Bill had racked up and Bill said, “Sorry I acted like such an ass the last time we met. I’m an obnoxious drunk and Silent here is trying to make me cut back.” He lifted a Coke and nodded to her.

  “How do we play with three of us?” Ell asked.

  Bill snorted, “Oh, no! You’re not going to try to give us that, ‘I’m a beginner who doesn’t know anything about pool,’ crap are you? Remember, we’ve seen you play.”

  Ell shrugged, “Sorry, I really am a beginner who just happened to get really lucky that night. Hasn’t that ever happened to anyone else?” She looked up at them innocently.

  Bill and Silent looked at each other, then Bill shrugged in turn and said “OK, you play cutthroat like this…”

  After the explanation they played a couple of games, Ell carefully putting in one ball each time her turn came up and losing badly because the two bikers were actually quite good. She bought a round of drinks after each game, but everyone stuck with soda, even Silent, who true to his moniker rarely said anything. Then she saw Jerry across the room, staring at her wide eyed. She broke off the pool game and went over to him. “Hey, Jerry. Where’s the rest of the gang?”

  “You’re playing pool with those guys?!” he said, staring across the room at Bill and Silent.

  “Um, yeah, they’re pretty nice when they haven’t been drinking.”

  “Humpf! Well the rest of the gang has been in Johnson’s lab all hours the past couple days, trying to figure out whether you really made your ‘spin bumping’ experiment work or not.”

  Ell’s forehead wrinkled. “’Spin bumping’ never worked. What worked was photon-gluon resonance.”

  “Yeah, whatever. They’ve been trying to get it to work. Thank God I never had anything to do with it. The way Johnson’s been riding Roger, you’d think that he expected Roger to have watched your every move, day in and day out.

  “Ouch, but what about Emma?”

  “Johnson remembered you saying something about Emma helping you with a circuit and when he found the two different circuit sets you’d had the fab lab make, he started grilling her about the one she helped you with.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Oh yes. He’s been yelling nonstop. You’d think it was their fault!” He shrugged, “It doesn’t sound like they’ve made much progress though.”

  Over Jerry’s shoulder, Ell saw the front door of the bar open and James come in, followed by Emma and Roger. She went over to them, “Oh man, guys! I am so sorry! Jerry’s been telling me that you’ve gotten dragged into this mess between Johnson and me?”

  “Dragged kicking and screaming, damn right!” Emma said. “He is such an ass. And a hateful man to boot. He isn’t even my professor and he’s had me down in his lab all day today, working on stuff I know nothing about while my own research is going to hell.” Her shoulders slumped. “But, Ellen?”

  “Yes?”

  “He had the fab lab build more copies of your circuits. Both the one you made that was so expensive, and the redesign I helped you with. They don’t actually do anything! Are you sure you’re OK?” Emma looked quizzically at her.

  Ell looked at the others and realized they were all looking at her with concern on their faces. She realized they may wonder if she’d gone manic or otherwise deluded herself. “Um, yeah, I’m fine.” She didn’t want to tell Emma she’d intentionally had her build incomplete circuits. “The circuits need a couple of other components before they function.” Which was true, they needed their nanotubes, in addition to the two solder bridges. “But it’s fine with me if you tell him you just think I was crazy and making crap up.”

  James said, “Oh believe you me, we’ve been telling him that. Sorry, but without you there to defend yourself and with you apparently not ever intending to come back, we’ve been letting your reputation slide right down the toilet. Well, not Roger here, he can’t seem to stop defending you—don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

  Ell looked at Roger who had a sheepish look on his face. He looked down at his feet, then back into her eyes. “Hey, Ellen. I just can’t stand it when he says stuff about you.”

  They sat down. Emma said, “It’s true, Roger has been risking life and limb; well at least sanity and eardrums, defending you. To hear him tell it we’ve been associating with a Saint. I’m expecting the Pope to call about your beatification any time.”

  “Hey thanks,” Ell said and winked at Roger. “But you guys just go ahead and disparage my reputation with Johnson. I’d prefer it if he decided that my project was all in my imagination.”

  “Really?” they chorused.

  “Yeah. I’m hoping to be able to commercialize some devices from it, but even though Johnson should have no rights to the tech after telling me to drop it and making me work on it nights and weekends, I don’t want to have to fight him for the rights.”

  “Really? But what commercial value would it have? Johnson says you claimed it can be used in communications?”

  “Yeah. I think so. Though a lot of work would need to be done to make it viable.” Ell thought to herself that that statement was true. Work would have to be done to commercialize it. They would assume that, like most discoveries, it would need an incredible amount of engineering work done to make it into a viable and usable product. Most prototypes were marginally functional, look at the Wright brothers first airplanes. There was no reason to tell them that the prototypes she’d made were actually working great already.

  “Well, you certainly didn�
��t put enough information in that invention disclosure form for us ordinary humans to figure it out.”

  “Yeah, the IDFs really don’t ask for all the details and I didn’t think I should put them in before patent protection was underway.”

  A waitress came and took their orders and their conversation turned to more pleasant things.

  When it came time to go, Roger got up to walk her home again. He took some good natured ribbing from James. “Hey, Rog, you going sweet on the girl? That why you’ve been defending her to Johnson?”

  He just ducked his head and shrugged. Ell realized that, tall and smart as he was, he was actually pretty shy. Maybe he doesn’t have much more experience with this boy-girl stuff than I do? She turned to James and said, “Hey, now you back off my knight in shining armor. We damsels need our protection from evil professors and horrid Rigellians.”

  They all turned and grinned at Jerry. He grinned back and said, “Ah hah, it is good to see you’re finally beginning to heed my warnings!”

  Ell and Roger headed out the door and after a little way; Roger’s hand found Ell’s again. They walked in silence a while, then talked about their plans for Thanksgiving. Roger would be heading home to Morehead City and Ell realized there was some chance she might bump into him as “Ell.”

  This time, when they got back to Ell’s apartment complex, Roger walked her up to her apartment door. They turned and faced one another uncertainly again. Roger said, “Every time I bring you home lately, I worry that it’ll be the last time I see you.”

  Ell wrinkled her nose as she grinned up at him, “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  He fumblingly put his arms around her and gave her a hug, leaning his head down next to hers. He felt her lips next to his ear. She quietly said, “Roger?”

  Her breath in his ear gave him goose bumps. “Yes?”

  “I think we’re both pretty geeky and shy?”

  He drew his head back and looked into her eyes from a few inches away. He shrugged.

  Ell pulled him closer and whispered in his ear, “I just want you to know that it’s OK with me if you kiss me.”

  Roger’s goose bumps were back. “OK,” he mumbled, then slowly moved his lips to hers, startled by the minty taste of her lipstick. Wow! He thought to himself, this is way better than I imagined.

  Ell savored the sensations of her first real kiss, thinking wonderingly about how warm and firm his lips were. It made her feel all warm and fluttery inside and sent pleasant tingles down her spine.

  Roger felt her hand move up his back to rest on his neck and pull him more firmly into the kiss. The feel of her fingers there somehow added to the kiss. Then she broke the kiss and leaned back eyes twinkling. She said, “Hey, I really liked that! Maybe again sometime?” she let go and turned to her door.

  Roger resisted the temptation to reach out and pull her to him again. Something about this girl was magical and he didn’t want to ruin it. “Me too, and yes, definitely.” She stepped into her apartment and swung the door closed, stopping with it open just enough for him to see one eye, which winked at him before she closed the door the rest of the way. He turned to go home, feeling a mix of frustration and ecstasy. A bright moon lighted his way home through a cool crisp evening.

  The next day Ell washed off her makeup, bronzers and mousse, converting back to her “Ell” persona. She left her apartment in a hoodie with a scarf over her face and headed down to her rental car, but she didn’t encounter anyone in the brief trip.

  The drive to Morehead City was uneventful and she parked a block away from her grandmother’s house. When she walked up to Gram’s house she didn’t notice the small camera on the fence, but that was hardly surprising because it was tiny. Its buried electronic brain sent notification to its masters in Goldsboro though, and they exclaimed to finally see the young woman they’d been looking for. “Mr. Li,” one shouted, “she is back at her home in Morehead City!”

  He grunted, “Finally! Gather the team, the mission is a go.”

  Ell opened the door and called out, “Mom? Gram?”

  They were sitting at the dining table studying a slate but both looked up in delight at her entrance. “Ell!” they said together. Hugs and excited catching up were followed by preparation of juicy BLT’s for lunch.

  Before taking another big bite, Ell nodded at the slate they’d been hovering over, “What’cha workin’ on there?”

  Kristen said, “Trying to analyze our finances. My attorney says that even though the divorce won’t give me any money from Jake, I should get my own money back. But I have to get through until then and that obnoxious SOB has even managed to get a large part of my salary ‘sequestered’ until the divorce is concluded. Not because he really thinks he’s entitled to it in the end but just because he knows how to work the system and he can make it hard for me. I think he’s hoping I’ll knuckle under and crawl back to him like I used to.”

  “Aw, Mom, I am so sorry you ever got hooked up with that creep.”

  “Me too, kid, me too. Anyway we were trying to make sure we can make it a few more months on Gram’s pension and my partial salary. That $5,000 you sent really helped.”

  Gram said, “I don’t want to take a loan out on the house, but I will if we have to.”

  Ell said, “I don’t want to count chickens before they’re hatched but there’s a pretty good chance that the little device I invented will bring in a fair amount of money.”

  Gram said, “Well that might be, but we shouldn’t count on it.”

  Ell could tell that her grandmother didn’t really think there was any chance that her little granddaughter could have invented anything that would bring in money. But that was OK. Ell didn’t want to count on the invention either, unless and until she actually had money in hand. With the loan to her mother and flights to Boston, she’d burned through almost all of her remaining savings but, other than the $5,000 for her mom, hadn’t quite gotten into the hundred thousand from Dr. Smythe yet. If possible, she intended to return that hundred thousand to Dr. Smythe if the invention didn’t work out. The money he’d spent on the patent was bad enough. She said, “I’ve told the Air Force that I’m available, but they told me that I have to do an abbreviated Officer Training course since I didn’t do all four years at the Academy. So I won’t actually start, until the officer’s training starts in late January and I won’t get any paychecks until a month after that. However, I do have an investor who’s advanced me some money on the invention—we can dip into that if we have to.”

  “Really?” Her mom said. “Well I guess somebody must have faith that it’s going to make some money.”

  The next few days leading up to Thanksgiving were lazy and uneventful. Ell spent some time talking over the net to Smythe and Exeter about exactly how they would present the idea to their potential buyers the next week. Ell drove to Raleigh to get the PGR-clock that had been shipped to Australia and send it back to Australia so that they could have the clock in Austrailia for their demonstration. It was addressed to an international patent associate of Miller’s named Allison who would hold it for the demo. On Thursday, Ell, her mom and Gram cooked all day for the big dinner they had traditionally held with a few of their neighbors each year. Ell found herself bemused to be sitting next to a little girl who looked up at her and said, “You look a lot like that Olympic gymnast.”

  “Do you mean Ell Donsaii?”

  The little girl nodded thoughtfully, “I think so.”

  Ell smiled, “That’s who I am.”

  The girl’s eyes got big and she said, “Are not!”

  Ell grinned at her a moment, then said, “OK, you’ve got me there. Aren’t you Mary Estes from across the street?”

  The girl nodded. From across the table, Mrs. Jenkins said, “Ell, could you pass the butter.”

  As Ell said “Sure.” and reached for it, she heard Mary gasp. She looked back down at her.

  Eyes open very wide, Mary said “Are too!”

  E
ll grinned down at her. In a conspiratorial whisper she said, “Would you like to see the medals?”

  Mary nodded her head up and down, finger in her mouth.

  “After dinner we’ll go see them OK?”

  Wide eyed, Mary nodded again.

  On Saturday afternoon Ell, feeling a little stir crazy, went into town to do some Christmas shopping. She didn’t notice a van pull out to follow her. On the way home she had a whim and turned into Emmerit’s restaurant, it was almost dinner time and she could use something to eat. As soon as she entered, she saw Roger’s sister Shelly seating people. She waved hello to her old classmate.

  Shelly’s eyes widened and she squealed delightedly while hugging Ell at the hostess station. “Ell! It’s so great to see you! Are you here to have dinner?”

  Ell could feel people staring at her, “Yep. Where should I sit?”

  “Are you by yourself?”

  Ell nodded.

  “Oh! Sit here at the counter, we can catch up!” She indicated an empty stool next to the hostess station.

  “Sure.”

  “Etta?” she said, looking up into the screens of her AI. “Call Roger and tell him that Ell Donsaii is here in the restaurant.”

  A little alarmed that her disguise might have been penetrated, Ell said, “Roger?”

  “My older brother. He just thinks the world of you and made me promise to call him if you ever came in.” Conspiratorially she said with some indication of disbelief, “He’s a physics grad student so he says he admires you because of that paper you wrote, not your gymnastics. Or that’s what he claims anyway!” Shelly winked at Ell as if men were entirely too transparent. Her brow furrowed, “I hope you don’t mind?”

  Ell said, “Not at all, I love talking physics.” She took her seat and Shelly took her order personally.

  Between Shelly’s seating other customers, Shelly and Ell talked about what had been happening in the lives of their classmates. A couple of other people that Ell knew came by, and a couple of kids asking for autographs, and then Ell heard a familiar voice, “Ms. Donsaii?”