by M J Kendrick
The Reese family tradition was to have breakfast, then gather around the tree to distribute the gifts. Christmas day breakfast was always a hoot, with everybody always joking and messing with each other. This year was no exception.
Jean and David had decided to prank Carlton with his gifts by giving him socks, a toy rocket, and a towel.
Carlton’s feigned gratefulness and thanks caused them to almost roll around the floor in stitches of laughter before they gave him his real gifts of a state-of-the-art laptop, noise-canceling headphones, a beautiful, aviator-style chronometer watch, and an envelope with a check for $25,000.
Carlton was taken aback with the money and genuinely was lost for words.
Money had never been an issue for Carlton, as his parents both had extremely well-paid positions, although recently, he had found himself running a little short at times after buying the things he would use in the house in Wakefield and at MIT.
Carlton thought that his parents had guessed that might be the case, hence the check. Either way, it was very gratefully received.
Carlton’s gifts to his parents were less grandiose. He had thought long and hard on what to give them and truly had a tough time. They really had all the gadgets and luxuries they would ever need, which narrowed his options. In the end, he gave them each photographs that he knew they hadn’t seen before. One of him proudly holding up his science project when he was at Rosewood and the other with him and the other Smarties all posing with their new Smart cars on the day that they first took them back to the house in Wakefield. He’d had them mounted in beautiful silver frames and boxed.
Both his parents cried when they opened their gifts.
***
It was the day before New Year’s Eve, and Jean and David were frantically running around the house putting the final things in place before the imminent arrival of their guests. Lucy had called Carlton when their plane from Denver had landed, leaving them an hour and a half to get things ready.
“Did you know about this?” asked Lucy down the phone to Carlton, while her parents were sorting out a rental car.
“Not until I arrived back home from the house. Believe me, I was as shocked as you. I think they had it arranged for a while,” he said.
“I do too,” agreed Lucy. “Seems like they’ve become best of friends since we joined MIT.”
“Mom’s already agreed to take you on a tour of her lab at ACR. She didn’t sound surprised when I asked,” said Carlton.
“Really?”
He could hear the excitement in Lucy’s voice.
“Yep, and I’ll get to show you where I usually work.”
“That’s great... Oops, here comes Mom and Dad. See you shortly.” Lucy hung up.
Carlton was in the lounge sitting by the tree. He leaned over the back of the chair and shouted, “Mom, Dad, that was Lucy. They’ve just landed. They’ll be here in an hour and a half.”
Almost immediately, he could hear the increase in activity to get things finished, as panic set in.
Carlton chuckled to himself and switched on the TV.
Once they had all arrived and had got settled, it was quite clear to Carlton and Lucy that their parents had planned to pick up where they had left off on the night of the MIT admission party. The wine and laughter started almost immediately.
Carlton looked at Lucy and said, “Here we go again. Come on, I’ll show you my loft lab.”
Lucy chuckled and said, “Lead the way.”
Lucy loved Carlton’s loft room and very soon they were excitedly talking about the marvelous model spacecraft he had hanging all around.
“Wow,” she said, “I never realized you were into it this much.”
She closely examined his Captain Galaxy science project.
“Oh, I really am,” said Carlton. “At first, it was just kids’ stuff, but as I got more and more into working at my Dad’s lab, I started to really delve into the design and drive elements of what I call the ‘Hollywood’ tech. There were always way too many assumptions and made up things for them to really work. When I started on this . . .” he picked up his science project, “I came up against my first real challenge of how to achieve a fraction of what my heroes’ ships could do, especially when it came to thrust and lift.
“In the end, I had to settle for making it appear to work in the same way by using a quietened, shrouded propeller setup with boosted power so that it looked and sounded real.”
Lucy was clearly impressed, “Is that what you’re going to do after MIT?” she asked.
Carlton looked thoughtful. “Not sure yet—eventually, I suppose. I know I’d like to. It all depends on what happens over at the farm. Whatever I choose, I think I had always imagined I would start off by working on nano tech in my Dad’s lab. What about you?”
Lucy was far more confident. “Oh, I plan to follow your mother’s path in stasis pod development, but I want to specialize in an area that allows me to combine it with astrophysics and exobiology and develop a way that allows the integration of a system that will enable long-term suspended animation for use in extended space travel.”
Now it was Carlton’s turn to be impressed. “So if I build it, you can get us there!”
They both laughed out loud at their aspirations, but deep down inside, their minds were quietly churning through the “what if” scenarios.
The seeds had been sown.
Chapter Fifteen
During the time the Rondstats visited, Jean was never in a fit enough state from all the drinking and partying to personally show Lucy around her lab, although she did spend time with her discussing various methods and procedures.
Carlton was more than happy to take Lucy around the cryo lab, and they spent an entire day there.
Lucy was absorbing as much as she could and explored several possibilities with those of Jean’s people that had opted to be in the lab over the New Year period.
She came away knowing exactly what she wanted to do, and if she ever had any thoughts about which possible direction she might take on leaving MIT, it was now a distant memory.
Lucy knew exactly what she was going to aim for.
The day after the Rondstats had left, Carlton and his father had gone through Carlton’s plans for the iridium block and had devised a comprehensive list of equipment that he would need. David had phoned Freddie and asked if he and Bar would get everything ready for Carlton to collect the following afternoon, as David was heading over to Orbital first thing in the morning for two days, and Carlton would already have left for Wakefield by the time he returned.
When Carlton arrived at the farm, Bar and Freddie had just finished off enclosing a spectral analyzer in protective packaging.
“Hi, Carlton,” said Freddie, followed by a “Whassssup” from a smiling Bar.
Carlton chuckled. “That’s not for me, is it?” he asked questioningly.
“Sure is,” replied Freddie.
“And that pile over there,” said Bar, pointing to a neat pile of equally well-wrapped equipment and boxes.
Carlton looked shocked. “You do know I’ve got a Smart car, right?”
But after three attempts, they eventually managed to squeeze everything carefully in.
Freddie stood back to admire their loading skills. “Who’d have thunk!... Fits in perfectly, but I’d take it easy over bumps if I were you. Some of this stuff is pretty delicate.”
“And costly,” added Bar. “What you have in there is close on a million dollars’ worth, so be sure to look after it.”
Carlton smiled nervously. “I’ll be super careful with it and keep my speed down below 130 on the way back to Wakefield!”
They had a good laugh before Freddie and Bar wished him all the best and said goodbye.
***
It was 11 p.m. when Carlton left home after resting and sleeping through the afternoon and evening. He wanted to drive back through the night to avoid traffic and have a more relaxed journey. Saying goodbye to his mother was emotio
nal, but he knew she was happy.
They had eaten dinner together and discussed just about everything, including Lucy, and now, as he settled into his steady but long freeway drive, his thoughts once again turned to the iridium block.
Something about it was niggling away at him, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. One thing was for sure, he would waste no time in trying to find out.
Carlton’s drive back to Wakefield took him fifteen hours. He arrived back at the house just after 2 p.m., having stopped only for gas and take-out coffee on the way. He was exhausted.
Most of the other Smarties had already arrived back, with Lucy due later and Haru due sometime in the early hours of the morning as his flight from Japan had been delayed.
As Carlton pulled into the drive, he saw Miles and Anton in the garage working on Miles’s drive system.
He jumped out and grabbed them to help him carefully unload Comet. They, too, were shocked at how much he had managed to cram into his car and also amazed at what goodies he had returned with. Anton was especially excited and couldn’t wait to get to play with some of the expensive equipment, but for now, they had to carefully store it all away in one of the spare rooms until they could rearrange the garage and make it more secure.
When they had all finished unloading, Carlton scooped up what was left of the pizza that was in the kitchen that the rest had ordered and headed for his room and his awaiting bed.
***
All of the Smarties’ schedules and workloads had increased dramatically, with all of their professors and lecturers loading them up with copious amounts of research and assignments as the New Year set in.
They hardly saw each other for the first three months of the year, as they were each beavering away in their rooms writing dissertation after dissertation.
Evening and night lectures were commonplace, and the only way the Smarties could ever tell who was home was by whose cars were in the drive. None of the boys had been into the garage for many weeks while everyone concentrated on the up and coming dissertation defenses which were just thirteen weeks away.
On the few occasions that they did manage to all meet up, usually over a massive pizza delivery, they talked incessantly about how much more they had to do compared to the other students at MIT in trying to cram eight months of work into two, but also how much they each loved everything that they were learning, and despite the unusually high workload, how much they craved for more.
The fact that they were all like knowledge sponges absorbing and using everything they could get their hands on had not gone unnoticed by the senior professors at MIT, who had soon recognized their genius and potential. They had quietly escalated each of the Smarties’ curriculums to push them even harder and would often discuss amongst themselves what great things they believed the Smarties would achieve in future years.
Lucy was the first of the Smarties to sit first-year defenses, just after the spring semester, with the others all sitting theirs over the following twelve weeks, Per’s being the last.
By the time summer break had arrived, all of the results were known. It was no surprise that each and every Smartie had lived up to their name and sailed through with nothing short of perfect scores all round. They were all steaming toward achieving their PhDs in record time.
Carlton had signed up for engineering science and aerospace design and was able to benefit from Miles and Per’s first-year notes and research, which allowed him to almost catch them up. He was fascinated by what he was learning and found that all four of his chosen subjects were interlinked and comfortably ran side by side.
He still had to remain tight-lipped about many of the processes and results that had been achieved at the farm. He was sworn to secrecy about their incredible advancements and innovations, especially around his parents’ groundbreaking research that had put them years ahead of every other country and probably made Omni the most technically advanced, and therefore secretive, organization in the world. In every area that Omni, the farm, and ACR were involved with was in some way superior to what was being taught at MIT.
He just had to quietly resign himself to the fact that he actually knew more than they did and would purposely, if not smugly, dumb down his dissertations to conform to the current accepted parameters.
The boys had all decided to stay at the house over the summer break to carry on with their own projects and finally get together and sort out the garage into a proper lab-style work area.
The girls, on the other hand, were both keen to leave early and return home to their families, leaving strict instructions not to make a mess.
Generally, all of the Smarties were very tidy, almost to the point of obsession, with the exception of the garage, which regularly looked like a bomb site with all the different projects strewn around, so the boys had been secretly planning together and had decided to address their workspace problem out of sight from the girls.
William had been in touch with his father to arrange for some remodeling to be done, as he knew his father had a vast network of contacts in the building trade, so as soon as the girls had left to for the airport, the boys jumped into action and immediately cleared the garage.
For two hours, they frantically pulled everything out and placed it into piles in the backyard.
William was looking at the piles and piles of stuff, which reminded him of a tornado hit swap meet.
“Mess, what mess?” he said, as the others all laughed out loud.
William didn’t need a space in the garage but was very keen to stay and chip in. He knew they all had potential to come up with something innovative and juicy and had made no bones about telling them that he would always “look after” them when it came down to actually using anything they came up with, often joking that whilst they may all be the next Einsteins, they wouldn’t know a commercial opportunity from a hot rock.
Shortly after midday, a dozen foreign contractors and machinery turned up at the house and within five days had not only built a large extension to the garage, tripling its size, but also bricked up and decorated the front to perfectly match the house. The whole new area had been completely re-floored, rewired, and the interior fitted out to make an impressive secure workshop/lab for the boys.
None of them felt guilty about their man cave, especially as none of the girls had ever expressed any desire to be in a noisy, industrial environment that most of the boys’ projects called for. Instead, they were happy to study in the peace and quiet of their rooms, which suited the boys and gave them an opportunity to enjoy some muck without being constantly told to clean up every five minutes.
It was late in the day when the contractors finally left, having cleaned up, so the boys decided on planning where to locate the equipment they had all now been gathering for a while, following Carlton’s example. They were all sitting around in their new lab feeling very pleased with themselves.
“This is a proper man cave for nerds,” said Miles in his English accent.
“Well, it will be when we get all the equipment in,” added William.
Carlton was looking around thoughtfully. “As I see it, we need to divide this up into a few areas, as some things must be kept separate and apart from others.”
Haru was nodding. “Yes, yes,” he said enthusiastically. “I must be dust free and so must Anton.”
“Me too,” said Carlton. “Plus, we may have a machinery/equipment clash, so we should keep Miles’s ‘dirty fabrication’ stuff at the far front. Per’s ‘clean fabrication’ can be adjoining Miles’s area but separated. Then we can have a hard, full partition to isolate the rest, starting with a small enclosed research and monitoring room in the central area followed by Anton’s laser work and Haru’s electronics bench.
“I’ll need the other end for all the nano equipment and growing apparatus.”
Whilst Carlton was speaking, Per had been drawing the layout on a whiteboard they had temporarily propped up against the wall. “Like this,” he said, as they all w
atched him expertly draw out the lab.
Miles pointed to his area. “I think my machinery might need a bit more space. The lathe is pretty big, so is the milling machine.”
Per looked at the monitoring enclosure. “We can reduce this area a little, and if we rotate Anton and Haru’s area to a back-to-back configuration, we’ll gain the extra fabrication space.”
They were all nodding and smiling. Carlton stood up and said, “Right then, we’d best get measuring up. If we can mark out the locations for everything now, then tomorrow we can move in the heavier stuff and build the partitions with the materials the contractors left for us.”
Thinking ahead, Carlton had the contractors leave a generous supply of timber and boards for them to internally divide the new lab. It had been neatly piled up against the walls and would be enough for them to construct the partitions and custom workbenches that they needed. They even had additional pre-framed glass panels and paint to create a light environment for them all to work in.
They all jumped up and crisscrossed, bumping into each other like a Keystone Cops movie as they tried to head for their areas before realizing that they all needed to start with Miles and work down, which was just as well, as they only had one tape measure between them. They all started laughing. They were all really enjoying the team effort, and it showed.
By midnight, they had organized who would be doing what in the morning. Everything had been marked out and taped. Lines showed exactly where everything was to be placed and built. Wearily, they all headed off to bed.
***
The boys were all up early the following day, eager to make a start. Miles’s heavy machinery was first on the agenda, and it took most of the morning to place and securely anchor before it was all up and running. Next was the framework for the partitions, which went up quickly.
Very soon, the new lab was taking shape. The next two days were early starts and late finishes but, by the end, had resulted in the majority of the construction being completed with just shelving, benches, and painting to do. The boys were having a great time and worked together like a well-oiled machine.
