I Found A Knife
A Story site from EldonHughes
Willie & Frank--
Shakespeare?
In Nano-Time
Chapter 11 --
Pop Goes the Wizell
Shaun and I went out for pizza. I didn't tell the mice. Willie would have insisted that I bring him some. Jennifer had already chewed me out for that once. I wasn't looking for a repeat session. I made it an early night though and got back in time for the football game. It was Sunday night, and the Rams had the night game against the Chiefs.
THE RAMS STILL SUCK.
Willie typed about halfway through the second quarter. I had already given up on the game and was surfing the internet on my laptop. After awhile I realized that Frank was watching my screen.
CAN YOU MAKE THE PRINT BIG ER. He typed.
I hit Control and the plus sign and blew the print up as large as it would go. I opened a blank Document.
HOW IS THAT?
I typed.
GOOD he answered. Then, CAN YOU MAKE IT SO THAT WE CAN DO
THAT?
I thought about it for a bit.
MAYBE. I typed. I COULD ADD SOME BUTTONS ON THE SIDE. YOU WOULD HAVE TO LEARN WHAT THEY DO IN CASE YOU ACCIDENTALLY WALKED ACROSS ONE, AND HAD TO FIX IT.
Frank moved across the wordpad.
CAN YOU READ THIS?
YES.
DO YOU THINK IT WAS BY ACCIDENT?
Sheesh FINE DON'T BE SO TOUCHY.
He chirped and squeeked with Willie for awhile. Then,
WHEN.
Hmm. Now that I'd built the wordpads, I knew how. I
had a spare I could modify. It shouldn't be too hard.
TOMORROW. PERHAPS THE NEXT DAY.
Frank moved around the touch pad, chirping at Willie.
THAT WOULD BE PERFECT.
~~~~~~~
When I came back from my shower Jennifer was just finishing the morning mouse routine. We had taken to calling the regular feeding, weighing, measuring, injecting, detecting, inspecting, etc. of the mice just the mouse routine.
“Hey, morning,” she said and smiled at me. I was still toweling my
hair dry, which let me hide a very unreasonable blush. I mean, I was
dressed, mostly. I was wearing some gym shorts, so anything I had to
be embarrassed about was covered. Wait, that didn't come out
right...
Probably, the blush was due to what I was thinking, not what I
wasn't wearing. I opened the door and saw that smile and all I could
think of was how great it would be to wake up to that smile every
morning. The blush made me decide to change the subject before it
got out of my head.
“Frank says they want to go outside,” I said.
“Really? Wonder what changed his mind.”
“He said Shaun did. Apparently they were talking yesterday and Shaun
told him how much prettier outside looks when it isn't on the
television.”
“Can we do that?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don't see why not. The cage isn't that heavy, but we could also build a smaller one, or maybe one of those see through ball things....”
“No,” she said. “I mean... besides the matter of their personal safety, I'm sure the folks upstairs would want to know what they are thinking when they are outside... what they are feeling, sensing... stuff like that.”
“Oh.” That's all I had. “Oh.” I hadn't thought about 'stuff like that'.
“I don't know. Probably,” I answered. “I'm sure we can work it out.
We might have to purchase some stuff, some wireless gear maybe.”
“Ok,” she said. “You want to ask Doctor Kyle about it, or you want
me to?”
“Be my guest. You'll probably see him before I do, anyway.”
“All righty then. Do you have lunch plans?”
“Not that I know of, why?”
“I thought you might want to meet me for pi--”
“WAIT!” I held up my hand. But it was too late. Willie was already
moving across the touch pad.
PIZZA. WE WOULD LIKE A MEDIUM DOUBLE CHEESE AND AN ORDER OF CHEESE STICK S
Jennifer went to the keyboard.
WHEN DID YOU HAVE CHEESE STICKS?
WE HAVE NOT. YET. SAW THEM ON THE TV. AT THE FOOT BALL GAME. A PLACE
CALL ED PIZZA HUT. IS THERE REALLY SUCH A PLACE WHERE ALL THEY DO IS
MAKE YOU PIZZA ALL DAY.
Jennifer laughed. YES THERE IS.
IT MUST BE HEAVEN.
BYE WILLIE.
She looked at me. “I made pizzas for three years straight in high
school. Heaven is not in the list of adjectives I would use to
describe it.”
“Huh,” I said. “I thought I smelled a hint of mozzarella when you kissed me.”
“Darn,” she said. “And I was this close to giving you the chance to
kiss me back.”
“Now that's a double cheese I could go for.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her to me.
Hmpf. Tilt left. How about that?
She pulled away and smiled at me. “See you later.”
As she went out the door I glanced at the computer screen.
ABOUT TIME JAKE
“Oh, Shut up.”
~~~~~~~
I heard my
phone ringing before I ever got to my workbench.
“Jake, it's Shaun. We need you up in the gamers lab.”
“Something wrong or is Frogger kicking your butt?”
“Nothing wrong. We just need you up here for a minute. Bring some
gloves.” And then he hung up.
Nothing wrong. Yeah, right. I could smell trouble from the top of the stairs. No, really. Something smelled burned... electricity type burned. That was the good smell. The bad one was something.... just foul.
Shaun was standing out in the hallway, with the front of his t-shirt pulled up over his nose.
Turns out a couple of the gamers “over served” themselves with a
bunch of that super caffeinated soda crap, and hadn't eaten in a day
or so. They wound up getting sick all over a couple of workstations.
If it had just been the keyboards it would have been fine. But
somewhere in the heaving one of them knocked over a full glass of
soda and it poured down the keyboard tray and into one of the
computers.
My stomach roiled. Sorry, Jennifer. Lunch is out. Maybe dinner, too.
Shaun said, “Smoke came out.”
“That's bad.” I said. Shaun nodded. Computers run on smoke. If you ever see the smoke leaving your computer, chuck it in the trash. It won't come out to play anymore. Oh, and back up your work frequently, your letters, and school work, and stolen mp3's... before the smoke escapes. You're welcome. That'll be ten bucks.
No way was I trying to clean up the keyboards. They went into the trash just ahead of the rags and paper towels that maintenance used to clean up the floor. But I had to try and save as much of the computer itself as I could. These things cost money. I could hear Doctor Marten in my head. Funding doesn't grow on trees. No, sir. We have to save circuit boards and buttons so that we will have money for shiny new lab coats and printed office pens with this year's department slogan on them.
It is more expensive this year. One of the graduating researchers last year “misspelled” the words on the new research departments lab coat orders.... I say “misspelled” because the guy was on his way out the door, of course. So, maybe he did, and maybe it was spelled exactly as he intended. In any case, no one noticed until the new lab coats arrived, and he was long gone.
But, if you come across a lab coat that says “Wash U Rear Dept.” on the breast pocket, hang on to it. They're in pretty hot demand right now.
I took the dead computer back to my work bench. Smoke usually leaves behind burn marks on circuit boards. I identified the bad parts and swapped them for good ones. I was just screwing the cover back on when Doctor Wizell stuck his head in my door.
“Jennifer tells me that Willie and Frank want to go outside.”
“That's what they said, Sir. How do you want to do this?”
“I guess that depends on how much input we can get when we do it.”
I have this rubber stress toy on my desk. It looks like a happy little penguin. When you squeeze the body its little flippers flap up and down and its beak opens and makes a small squawking sound. Shaun gave it to me for my birthday the first year I started at the lab. I named him Linus and put him on my desk.
If you get the Linus reference, then you probably already consider
yourself to be a geek. If not, here's the deal. Linus Torvald is the
guy who invented the Linux operating system, the computer operating
system favored by most geeks, worldwide. Where Microsoft has the
little window icon, and RCA has the dog, Linux has a penguin.
Of course, with Shaun a simple squawk couldn't be enough. He poked a large pin hole in the mouth. Then he squeezed it tight and held it under water. When you let go of it the penguin sucks in big toy full of water, which can then be directed at any unknowing person who squeezes the little guy. I named him Linus and put him on my desk. “Unknowing” is a very interesting word. For example, I never knew when Shaun might have come by my office and let the little guy drink his fill. I usually handled it very carefully.
Tightening down the last screw I looked up just in time to see Doctor Wizell pick up the penguin. He was leaning against my desk, examining it, turning it around in his hands.
“Umm, Doctor W---.”
“Do you think we, meaning you, could hook up some way to let the
mice communicate with us while they are outside? Maybe something
wireless?” He put Linus back on the desk.
While he wasn't looking I smiled to myself. I say it downstairs and, like magic, it comes out up here. Way to go Jennifer.
“I think we could do that,” I answered. “I wouldn't want to strap a monitor to the cage, or anything. But we could probably set it up so that you could carry a laptop and see what they are typing. You'd have to hold it up to the cage so they could read what you were asking. That will probably look a little silly or strange to people out on the quad. But maybe I can come up with something else.”
He picked Linus back up and held him up to look at him face to face.
“That's no problem. I've looked silly often enough before. This
thing's kinda cool.” He put it back on the desk and looked at me.
“How long do you think it will take to makegoing outside possible?”
“No more than a couple days, end of the week at most. I'm going to need to purchase a couple of parts. But they should all be available locally.”
“Whatever you need, should be fine, I expect. Bring me the purchase order and I'll sign it.” And out the door he went.
I went over to the desk and picked up the penguin. “And in just a
couple of days Willie and Frank get to go surfing on the world wide
web. How strange is that?” I said quietly. I put Linus down
and headed back to the gamer's lab with the repaired computer.
~~~~~~~
It only took a day to rig up the computer side of solution. I bolted a flat screen monitor to one end of the cage. Then I rigged it so that whatever was typed on the touchpad would go, wirelessly to the laptop, and then show up on both the laptop screen and the screen on the cage.
Turned out the hard part had no wires or circuit boards at all. I
spent the next day, in between blinky light failures, looking for a
rolling table with big enough wheels to go outside. Failing that, I
went surfing the web the next night for some wheels that I could add
to one of our existing carts.
I was just about to give up when I heard a series of bangs and clangs from down the hall. Then something slammed against the wall outside the door. A moment later what ever it was clanged again at the other end of the hall. Sticking my head out the door I saw Shaun running down the stairs toward me.
“It got away from me on the stairs,” he said between short breaths. “Look. I found a ride for the guys.” He pointed down the hall. He had 'found' a medical stretcher, complete with ten inch rubber wheels for rolling around parking lots.
“So I see,” I said. “I also see the large, ugly green mattress with the four inch block letters that say property of Saint Louis University Medical Center on it.”
“Oh, I'm going to take that home with me.” he said.
“Well,” I shrugged. “In that case. It's perfect.”
“I thought so. See, it even has straps so we can strap the cage down
on it.”
“Do I want to know how you magically found this newly repurposed
mouse chariot?”
“Probably not,” he admitted. “But Jamey says you owe him gas money,
to cover the transportation costs. Man, that truck of his
sucks gas like you wouldn't believe.”
“What I believe is that the two of you are nuts.”
“But in a good way,” he said.
“True,” I agreed. “But a less crazy person might have used the elevator.”
“There's an elevator?”
~~~~~~~
Four days later, we rolled the world's first internet ready, wireless, interactive, mouse house off the loading dock and out into the quad. It turned into a small entourage. You'd think we'd crowned a king and were parading him, on our shoulders, around the campus. Half the lab came along for the ride. Not that they were going to help push or anything. That job went to Shaun and I, under Jennifer's watchful eye. All of the research team was there, along with folks from a number of the other research teams. I hadn't realized that Willie and Frank's secret was out, or that they had developed such a fan club.
Jamie was there, standing off to one side. After we locked down the wheels on the stretcher, umm, research cart, and the research team surrounded the cage, I wandered over to where he was standing. I slipped him a twenty for the gas.
He didn't even look at me, just stuck the bill in his pocket. “I've never seen you before in my life.”
I nodded. “Pleasure not doing business with you.”
"You shoulda been with us when we rode it down the parking garage ramps. It was so cool!"
"Aww, man...." I went and pushed my way through the gathering crowd to watch the action.
Doctor Kyle Wizell had the laptop and was typing something in.
SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF BEING OUTSIDE?
He held the screen so Willie and Frank could see it. Frank moved around the touch pad. The words appeared on the laptop screen first, and the cage screen just a split second behind that. Nice.
SO FAR IT ALL LOOKS LIKE YOU PEOPLE.
Doctor Kyle laughed. “He has a point.” Then he motioned for everyone
to back up, and move over to one side. “If we could just have
everyone move back toward the building, please. Back toward the
building about twenty feet or so, please. That's it, thank you. We,
umm, we'll translate what is on the screen for every one.” Once
every one was off to one side it was just Doctor Kyle, Doctor Wizell,
and Jennifer standing to one side of the cage. And Shaun and I, of
course, standing on either end, with a hand on the cart, trying to
look like we really needed to be there.
“Doctor Wizell,” Doctor Kyle said. “If you would.”
As lines appeared on the laptop screen, Doctor Wizell read them.
HE WAS RIGHT. IT IS MUCH BRIGHT ER OUTSIDE. MUCH CLEAR ER. BETTER
THAN THE PICTURES ON THE SCREEN. AND SO MUCH BIGGER.
“Would you ask him if he notices anything else?” Doctor Kyle said.
Doctor Wizell typed it in.
IT IS QUIETER.
“Quieter? Outside?” Doctor Wizell said. Then typed the same thing on
to the screens.
YES. INSIDE THERE ARE ALWAYS HUMS. THE LIGHTS HUM. THE AIR MACHINE
HUMS. HERE THERE ARE HUMS. BUT THEY ARE FAR OFF. THEY ARE BEHIND THE
OTHER SOUNDS.
OTHER SOUNDS? Doctor Wizell typed.
YES. HAPPY SOUNDS. BIRDS I THINK. PEOPLE MOVE ING. TALK ING. LAUGH
ING.
And, when Frank mentioned it, I could here laughing and talking. Not
amongst our group, but farther away. I pointed to the people playing
Frisbee across the quad.
YOU HAVE AMAZING HEARING. Doctor Wizell typed.
PERHAPS. OR PERHAPS THEY ARE JUST NEW SOUNDS TO US.
Willie moved across the touch pad.
THERE ARE ALSO SMELLS HERE. FAMILIAR SMELLS.
SMELLS? Doctor Wizell asked. NEW SMELLS?
NEW SMELLS. AND SOME OLD ONES. SWEAT. PEOPLE. PIZZA.
“Pizza?” Doctor Wizell said. “How would they know what pizza smells
like?”
“Umm,” I cringed. “I think I can explain that one.”
“We can have that conversation another time, I think.” Doctor Kyle
cut in.
Frank was moving around the keyboard again.
SHAUN. DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE TALK ED ABOUT POINT OF VIEW.
Shaun was standing on the other side of the keyboard. When Doctor Wizell said his name he came around so that he could see Frank, and read the screen.
Shaun looked at me when he saw his name on the screen.
"Thanks, Bro."
"No sweat, I added it to a Control Key shortcut."
I nodded back to the cage.
“Yes, I remember, Frank.” Shaun looked at Doctor Wizell. “Tell him yes, please.”
Doctor Wizell looked at Shaun for a moment, and then relayed the
answer to Frank.
YES
I SEE THING S HERE THAT I KNOW THE NAME S OF. TREES. GRASS. VERY HIGH BUILDINGS. I HAVE SEEN THEM ON THE SCREEN BEFORE. BUT THEY WERE JUST PICTURES. NOW THEY ARE REAL. I SEE THEIR REAL SIZE S. AND FROM MY POINT OF VIEW I FEEL VERY SMALL. VERY VERY SMALL.
"Perhaps we can introduce them to more of the outdoors. Would you people care to assist?" He got people in the crowd to take turns bringing them grass and flowers, and mulberries and walnuts from the trees. Even some dirt.
The mulberry was a particular hit to Willie and Frank. Maybe because the fruit was smaller than them. Or maybe because they could eat it.
WHERE DO THESE COME FROM? Willie asked.
We rolled the cart down the sidewalk to the nearest mulberry bush, and pushed them around it so that they could get a complete look at it.
AND THIS FOOD JUST GROWS THERE? Frank asked. AMAZING. WHY HAVE WE NOT HAD MORE OF THEM? ARE THEY EXPENSIVE?
NO, Doctor Wizell typed. THEY ARE FREE. THE FOOD WE BRING TO YOU IS VERY EXPENSIVE, HOWEVER.
YOU BRING US EXPENSIVE FOOD WHILE THE FREE FOOD IS HERE ON THIS TREE. Frank and Willie chittered at each other for a moment, before Frank moved across the wordpad again.
STRANGE.
I leaned in to whisper to Jennifer. "He has a point."
Everything people brought was investigated by Willie and Frank, and discussed. "How does it smell?"; "How does it feel?" And Willie had to taste everything. After a couple dozen things Willie moved across the screen.
WHERE ARE THE THINGS THAT PIZZA IS MADE FROM. NOTHING TASTES LIKE THAT YET.
The look I got from Doctor Kyle told me that, when we had that conversation, it was either going to be very long, or way too short.
It was several hours later when Shaun and I pushed the cage back inside.
"An excellent experiment," Doctor Wizell said. "Thank you for the excellent work today Jake."
I reached for the down button as we got to the elevator. Doctor
Wizell was ahead of me and hit the up button instead.
I looked at him.
“We've talked it over. We are going to move the mice up to the
lab,” he said.
My look became a stare. I was too stunned to speak.
The elevator doors opened and he pushed the cart inside.
“We'd like to introduce them to other varieties of stimuli, and get their reactions to them.” He moved to the other end of the cart and took Shaun's place. “Now that they are on wheels, and wireless, it will be much easier. You've done a great job, Jake. It's time we let you go home again, don't you think?”
And then the elevator doors opened.
Available Tales
--"Willie & Frank"
~~~~