Smarter

by Laurence E. Dahners

  Ell grinned up at him and waved, “Hi Roger.”

  Roger exclaimed, “Ell! What are you doing here?”

  “’Ellen’ told me you come here every Friday night. I was in town and thought I’d drop by and see what all the excitement is.”

  Suddenly, Roger noticed Al and Emma in the next booth. “Hey guys, did you notice who’s sitting in our regular booth?” They looked up with querulous expressions. “Ell Donsaii! Didn’t you even look into the booth?”

  “Really?” They chorused as they slid out of their benches. “We just saw that there was someone in it. I guess we didn’t look very hard.”

  Soon they were being excitedly introduced to Ell by Roger. “You know she’s from my hometown? I met her last weekend, but my sister has known her since high school.”

  Ell grinned up at him. “I came down here to meet you guys, sit, sit. Did Roger tell you that he saved my life last Saturday night?”

  Roger slid in next to Ell and the others slid in across, “I really didn’t. I just disabled the kidnapper’s boat and whacked one of them on the head with an oar. Her boyfriend from the Academy was the big hero. He got shot for it!”

  Ell said, “He’s a ‘friendly boy,’ not my ‘boyfriend,’ and you took just as many chances as he did even if you didn’t get shot. I owe you both, big time.”

  Emma and Al looked at Ell, thinking how young she looked to have accomplished so much. Emma felt a little envy over her flawless skin and both she and Al were a little thunderstruck to be in the presence of someone so well known in so many circles. Emma leaned forward, and said, “I feel really corny asking this, but my little cousin will kill me if I don’t get your autograph?”

  Ell smiled, “I’d be delighted, got anything for me to write it on?”

  “I’ll get a coaster,” Emma said, getting up.

  A chorus, “Get one for me too.” followed Emma away from the table.

  Al asked, “What are you doing in West 87?”

  “Well, from Ellen I knew that you guys hang out here and, since I was in town…”

  Roger excitedly interjected, “So Ellen finally called you and told you about her project?”

  Ell grinned crookedly, “Something like that.”

  Emma came back with a stack of coasters and a pen. For a few minutes they were all busy calling out dedications for autographs until everyone had what they wanted.

  Roger had just asked, “So what did you think of Ellen’s research?!” when Jerry and James came around the corner.

  Jerry exclaimed, “Have you heard the news?” Without waiting for a reply, he said, “My news service just flagged an announcement that Donsaii is patenting a communication device based on photon-gluon resonance!!!” What the hell! She’s going to beat Ellen to it!!”

  Dead silence descended on the table as everyone sitting there suddenly turned to look at Ell. Jerry noticed the stranger for the first time, then recognized her as she lifted a hand and waved weakly, “Hi.” she said.

  Jerry simply stared for a moment, then he slowly slid into the booth next to Emma as he said, “Holy crap! What are you doing here? Uh, excuse me, pleased to meet you, Ms. Donsaii. But, holy crap, what are you doing here?”

  Ell grinned, “Pleased to meet you too, Jerry. James, please sit down.”

  James, standing thunderstruck, shook himself, said, “Thank you.” and slid into the booth beside Roger.

  The waitress arrived then, and after Ell announced that “drinks are on me,” they busied themselves ordering.

  As the waitress walked away, Jerry turned back to Ell and said, “How did you know our names?” he waved toward James.

  Ell looked at him a moment, then said, “Now that’s an interesting story that has to do with our friend Ellen.”

  James said, “I don’t know if you know this, but she built a device based on photon-gluon resonance too. She’s been trying to patent it and might not be your friend anymore if you’ve beaten her to the patent.”

  Ell said, “Hmm, I’ve got a lot of explaining to do, have you got a few minutes?”

  Nods went around and Ell said, “First of all, I’m not sure if you know that when they kidnapped me this past weekend, that was the second time?” There were some surprised looks at that, though some evidently already knew it by the nods they gave. “The first time was last summer, when I was applying for a spot as a grad student at another university. I escaped unharmed that time too, but the people who’ve kidnapped me both times appeared to be working for the government of China and to have the resources to try as many times as they need to in order to eventually capture me. In any case, after they captured me the first time, I decided the safest course was to hide from them under a new, disguised identity.”

  Roger felt prickles down his back as he drew back to look at Ell, but it was Emma who tumbled to the facts first. “You let them disguise you with a huge ass???” she exclaimed.

  Everyone at the table stared at her now, trying to reconcile what Emma had implied with what they saw before them.

  Emma said, “And that awful nose?!”

  Ell looked at her, struggling to keep a straight face. “What is your friend Ellen going to think when she hears what you’re implying about her?”

  Emma suddenly looked appalled, thinking she’d gotten it all wrong, but then she saw the smirk struggling to surface on Ell’s face. “You little bitch!” she grinned. First you lie to me for a half a year about who you are, then you try to make me feel bad?!”

  Ell grinned right back. In her “Ellen” accent she said, “Well you said I had a big ass and ugly nose!”

  “Can’t believe I was talking to Donsaii the whole time!” and similar exclamations of disbelief were heard around the table.

  Emma exasperatedly said, “All those mornings when I felt so good because you couldn’t keep up with me on our runs! You probably could have run me into the ground!”

  “Oh no! I have terrible endurance, you were killing me! Besides I was wearing those heavy ‘fat pants,’ they’d slow even a good runner down.”

  James said, “Hah! I guess it’s no wonder that the brand new grad student understood that damned Donsaii math backwards and forward! She invented the crazy stuff that’s been turning my brain to mush for a year now!”

  Only Roger hadn’t said anything so far. He’d been staring at Ell, trying to reconcile the beautiful young woman sitting next to him with the woman he’d spent most of a semester becoming friends with. The friend he’d begun to think of as girlfriend material. With embarrassment he realized, the woman whom he’d thought would jump at the chance to call him boyfriend, but whom he now thought of as far too beautiful and too brilliant and too accomplished to consider him for that station. Then his mind rattled around the fact that he’d already spent some time kissing this stunning creature and she’d known who she was then – might she actually consider him to be boyfriend material?

  As everyone else intently discussed this revelation with one another, Ell looked shyly up at Roger and said, “Rog? You OK?”

  “Huh? Oh yeah! Sure. Why?”

  “’cause, you’re sitting there with your mouth hanging open and you haven’t said a word. I hope we’re still friends?”

  “Oh, yeah! Of course.”

  “Better than just friends?”

  “Damn, you must have thought I was an idiot when I came up to you in the restaurant and started talking to you about physics! And, yes, always better than just friends.”

  Ell put her hand on his arm, “You, coming up to me in Emmerit’s, was one of the sweetest experiences I’ve ever had.”

  “Yeah sure, right up there with winning those gold medals.” Roger smiled at her.

  “Right up there. Yes. The best part was when you told me about your friend ‘Ellen’ and how much you cared about her.”

  “Oh…”

  “And you told me she was brilliant and sweet and a great friend. It so warmed my heart to find out how you really felt about me.”

&n
bsp; Suddenly James leaned forward, “Ell, do you know if Johnson knows about this yet?”

  “Yeah… I told him this afternoon.”

  “Oooo. I would have loved to be there for that. How… why did you tell him?”

  “Well, that’s something I need to talk to all of you guys about.” She paused and when the table had fallen silent, she said, “I told him and the Chancellor and the tech transfer office because NCSU gets some of the money from the PGR which I wanted to start delivering, and I wanted them to promise…”

  “What!” Emma interjected, “Why do they get part of it? You were forced to do it all on your own time! And with your own money!”

  “Well I used some of NCSU’s equipment and did the research in University facilities, and to be honest, though I don’t like Johnson, he did give me the experimental know how to do the research that discovered PGR. Anyway, I wanted them to promise to keep my use of a secret identity under wraps so as not to give the Chinese clues how to look for me. Now I’m hoping you guys’ll help me keep that same secret for a few years?”

  “I’m not sure I’d trust Johnson to keep that promise.”

  “Hmm, well there’s quite a bit of money involved.”

  “Really? I mean transmission over entangled particles is pretty cool but, what can PGR do that we can’t already do? I mean our data transmission systems work great already.”

  Ell looked up at the ceiling and recited, “FTL transmission of data at optical rates without a fiberoptic infrastructure or final radio cell networks. It will be much cheaper, can reach anywhere, and is uninterruptible, uninterceptable and undetectable. Al, remember how you said the radiotelescopes hadn’t picked up significant radio transmission from any of the planets?”

  “Uh, yeah.” He said puzzled by this apparent non sequitur.

  “I think that’s because they’ve all moved on to something better.”

  “Holy crap!” he exclaimed, raising his gaze up to the ceiling while he considered the ramifications.

  “Anyway, I’m hoping that you guys’ll keep my secret for me?”

  There was a chorus of “sure,” and “of course.”

  “Thanks gang.”

  James sat up, “Hey! I’m suddenly worried that you let me win at foosball?”

  Ell said, “Oh, no. I wouldn’t do that?”

  “Do you swear, upon your friendship to all of us?”

  Ell looked stricken, “Well maybe I sandbagged a little?”

  “Oh my God! You’ve got to play me one time, full on, no holding back. I’ll want to tell my grandkids about it!”

  To Ell’s surprise, everyone seemed to think this was a great idea and they all started getting up and shuffling over to an empty foosball table. She sat a moment, wondering what to do, then slowly slid out to follow them.

  When she got to the table James had already credited it and received an allotment of balls. When she stepped up across from him he said, “Now, I know you are quicker than any human has a right to be. I saw you in the Olympics, remember. I want you to promise me you’ll play as hard as you can? I want to show my buddies what that’s like!”

  Ell studied him a minute, then said, “No, I won’t play full on for you to show your buddies. You can show your grandkids, but not before then, OK? This girl needs to have some secrets from the world. Maybe not from her friends here, but from the world, yes, secrets.”

  James paused a moment, realized that she was asking for something very important to her, then sighed, “OK, not before I have grandkids.”

  Ell stepped up to the table, gripped the goalie rod handles on her side and said, “OK, who’s going to be my partner?”

  James said, “No, no partner, just you.”

  Ell shrugged and rolled the men on the front two bars up out of the way, and then waited for James to drop a ball in.

  When the ball rolled in, Ell didn’t try to catch it with her front players but simply waited for James to move it up to his front men. When he had stabilized the ball there, he looked up at Ell and saw her focused intently on the ball. Her goalies weren’t in very good position. He made a feint to drive the ball to the left, actually drove it to the right and slammed it into her goal.

  Except the ball never reached her goal. Ell had let herself drift a little ways into the zone. When James’ swung, she moved her nearest man over in front of him, deflected the ball precisely back to his left where her other man was waiting to drive it the length of the table. In the view of her friends, Ell’s men simply appeared to blur. They heard a loud “thock” as her second man hit the ball and a “whir” as the ball flew the length of the table to crash into the back of James’ goal. The ball was moving so fast that most of the little group watching had no idea what had happened to it. The loud “thwap” the ball made hitting the back of James’ goal caused people in the bar to turn their heads curiously. James, simply paused, stunned, then shook his head and said, “Thanks, I’ve seen enough.” and turned to head back to the booth.

  As they walked back Emma said curiously, “What just happened there?”

  Jerry just shook his head and said, “I’m not sure I want to know.”

  Ell slid into the booth across from James who was staring into space and said, “You OK?” Inside she cursed herself for actually playing that shot, “full on” like he’d asked.

  James shivered his shoulders, then grinned at her, “I asked, you delivered. Thanks! You really could run the table at pool every time if you wanted to couldn’t you?”

  Ell shrugged, but didn’t answer. The rest of the group sat down and a more normal conversation gradually came about.

  A good time was had by all and eventually they broke up to head home. Ell was pleased to find herself walking home with Roger, though after waiting for him for a block, she found she had to slip her hand into his. They walked comfortably along for a while, and then she stepped closer, sliding her arm around his back to grip his waist, pleased when his hand went around her shoulder.

  Back at her tiny apartment, she pulled Roger inside, got one of his dark beers out of her fridge and sat on the edge of her bed holding it out to him.

  He sat next to her, twisting the cap off, then paused to look at it a moment. “You’re not really old enough to buy this are you?”

  Ell shook her head and raised an eyebrow at him.

  He grinned, took a sip and said, “Ahh, illegal beer, somehow it tastes so much better than legal beer.”

  She raised her face to his, “You owe me a kiss for the procurement of that fine contraband beverage.”

  He paid his debt.

  Saturday, Ell opened her Gram’s door and said, “Hello?”

  She was dismayed to see Gram and Kristen sitting at the dining table, looking like they were at a funeral. A man sat there with them, Ell recognized Officer Duncan from the night of her rescue. “What’s the matter?”

  Kristen sniffed, “As usual Jake’s the matter. That SOB has filed inquiries with the credit bureaus that have ruined my credit and Gram’s so that we can’t even take out loans. My lawyer is throwing in the towel. He doesn’t think he’ll get paid and doesn’t want to piss Jake off because Jake has too much power in local legal circles. Miles here,” she indicated Officer Duncan, “has volunteered to loan me some money, but I feel terrible about taking it.” She sniffed again, then pulled her shoulders up from their slump. “But enough of my troubles, I’ll get through this eventually. How are things for you?”

  Ell held up a finger a moment while she mumbled to Allan, then she looked up and said, “Things are going great! Not just for me, but for you and Gram too.”

  Kristen’s brows drew together. “What do you mean?”

  “Commercialization of my invention has been more successful than I ever dreamed.”

  “Wonderful! Will you get some money soon?”

  “Already got some. Check your account.”

  “But Ell, I need thousands…” She looked up at her AI screens, “Oh my… goodness!” she put a hand
on her chest. “Oh Ell! But that’s way too much! You can’t give me all your money.”

  Ell sat down beside Kristen and put her arms around her, then leaned near her ear and said quietly, “They are giving me ridiculous amounts of money. What I put in your account is just a ‘smidgen.’ Love you Mom.”

  Epilogue

  Ell leaned back in the lounge chair and listened to the sounds of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” drifting up from the pool deck below. She sipped her virgin piña colada and watched the young man working his way up the rock climbing wall affixed to the smokestack of their cruise ship. The sun came in at an angle that perfectly lit the play of the handsome strappy muscles beneath the skin of his back.

  From the next chair Kristen said, “Hey, I see you staring at that young man. Aren’t Phil and Roger enough for you? How many boyfriends do you need?”

  “Friendly boys, Mom. Not boyfriends. Not yet anyway. Hey, I’m only eighteen, I’ve only been kissed a couple of times, never been out on a real date and I’m on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. I think I should be allowed to ‘window shop’ a little before I commit, don’t you? Besides, who knows where the Air Force is going to send me next month? Phil and Roger may both be married long before I return to spinsterhood!”

  Kristen laughed. “You know that’s just what your Gram suggested I should do before I settled down with your Dad.”

  Gram raised her piña colada, “Hear, hear. You go girl. Window shop all you want!”

  Ell turned and looked at her mother. “Besides, I’m pretty sure you’re looking at him too. Isn’t Miles enough for you?” She arched an eyebrow.

  Kristen sniffed, “My interest is purely that of your chaperone, looking to the fitness of your prospects.” She tilted her head, “That one looks pretty good.” She winked as she held out her glass and Ell clinked hers against it.

  The End

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