"Whoa, Merry, look who's here!" Jim said, sotto voce. He,
Roderick, and I were at our lab table working on more assembly language code.
Everybody looked up and then looked at the door, except me and Jim. I gave Jim a look, and he tilted his head towards the door and grinned.
"Hi guys." Beryl walked in.
"Hi!"
"Hey."
"Yo."
"Hi, Beryl." I stood up and reached for an empty stool, but Roderick grabbed it first and slid it over next to me.
Beryl came in and came over to our lab table, greeting Trina with a touch of the fingertips and
a "Hi" before sitting down on the offered stool.
"Good enough. Whacha doin'?" Beryl looked at our scratch paper, where we had diagrammed what we understood of the problem and were writing tentative sequences of code.
"Working out how to add big numbers," Roderick answered before I could.
"Bigger than what fits in the eight bits we showed you yesterday," I added.
She looked at the diagrams with a bit of interest, then shrugged. "Geek to me."
Chuckles came from various directions.
"Got time to wait while we test this?"
"Sure. If it's not more than half an hour."
Todd looked up from where he and his group were helping Mr. Forrest test
the serial I/O board in the computer. "Should we yield the field and let them try their code?" he
asked.
Mr. Forrest nodded. "Time to take a break and see if we've figured anything out, anyway."
I gave Jim and Roderick a query with my eyes, and they both shook their heads.
"Not my code," Roderick responded.
"Let's use yours," Jim said.
Todd, Chuck, Moose, and Mr. Forrest stood up and yielded place for us at the Altair's table.
Beryl came over and stood behind me, resting her hands on my shoulders. I stopped working the switches long enough to give one of her hands a squeeze, using the time to squelching the nervous thrill that tried to stop my brain from working. I also ignored the snickers and murmurs around me.
"So what are these numbers in real num -- uhm, decimal?" Beryl asked.
"123 million 456 thousand 789 plus 987 million 654 thousand 321."
"Ah. One billion, one hundred eleven million, one hundred eleven thousand, one hundred ten."
More murmurs around us.
I turned and grinned at her. "And you pretend you don't know what we're doing here."
"Just an easy arithmetic problem." She grinned back.
Chuckles and quiet groans. Trina snickered. "Genius attracts genius?"
Beryl turned and they exchanged finger waves.
I looked at the ceiling. "How am I supposed to respond to that?" I muttered. I looked back at the computer.
Beryl gave my shoulders a squeeze. My stomach jumped, ever so slightly.
"Okay, let's see if it flies." I stepped through, reading the input numbers and results aloud.
00010101 plus
10110001 equals
11000110
I checked the status register LEDs. "-- with no carry. Good," I breathed.
11001101 plus
01101000 equals
00110101
"-- again, with no carry. Okay," I nodded, cautious.
01011011 plus
11011110 equals
00111010,
The carry bit in the status register array of LEDs lit up.
"-- with a carry. So far, so good. Okay,"
The carry, plus
00000111 plus
00111010 equals
01000010
And everybody clapped.
"Let's see your code." Mr. Forrest checked my work. "Lots of repeated instructions. That's faster than a loop, but it takes more program space, and we only have 4K that we know is working just yet. Try a loop?"
"Well, that's what Jim and Roderick were working on, but we weren't comfortable with where we put the loop count or with what happened to the carry while counting the loop."
"Let me see that, Jim."
Jim handed Mr. Forrest his work, and he checked through it, nodded, and handed it back. "Want to give it a try?"
"No confidence."
"Results might be interesting?"
"I'm not sure I'd have any idea what went wrong."
"We can all think about it. Joe, write your code up on the board for everyone to look at. And Jim, you can write yours on the board next to Joe's. Try to line up instructions that do the same things."
Jim and I went to the board and put our code up. We consulted about what lined up where, leaving some empty lines in my code where the loop control went and putting the repeated code from his loop in parenthesis to show where it matched my code.
"Still hesitant to try it, Jim?" Mr. Forrest asked.
Jim went back to our lab desk and looked through the summary of 8080 machine code instructions and their effects which Mr. Forrest had handed out for each lab group. He looked up and said, "Sure. Why not?"
"Hot seat." Mr. Forrest indicated the stool I had vacated.
"Do I get a back rub from Beryl?" Jim asked, with a wink at me. I grinned and looked at Beryl.
She grinned back. "Oh, since you're Joey's lab partner, why not?"
Jim looked surprised, but pleased, and sat down. Beryl stood behind him and rubbed his shoulders, then gave them a hard squeeze.
"Ouch. Feels good!"
Everyone laughed.
JIm's code ran successfully, as well, and we all applauded.
"Okay, I'm thinking we can leave the teletype for tomorrow and just let the rest of you try your code, and then maybe I can get home by midnight tonight. You can go when your code runs."
We all laughed.
After discussing the results we got with Jim and Roderick, I packed up my
stuff and left with Beryl. We turned left out the door, and she slipped her hand into mine.
At the first cross hall, I started to turn the library and bumped into her. We both giggled as I corrected course.
"This is the long way to the library?" I asked.
"Dad and Mom are home."
This time I couldn't squelch the butterflies in my stomach, and stopped.
Beryl turned back without dropping my hand, challenging me with her eyes.
"Erm, okay."
I started moving again, not quite feeling the faux granite floor under my tennis shoes. I couldn't say anything as we walked.
Beryl gently but playfully swung my hand in hers. She was doing the swinging. My muscles wouldn't have obeyed me if I had tried.
"Cat got your tongue?" she asked as we left the south wing.
It would be a few more years before the entire campus would be fenced in, se we
headed unimpeded for the street where she lived, less than ten minutes away.
"The cat or the butterflies she's chasing."
She giggled.
"Meeting your dad?"
"And Mom and Donna."
"Donna?"
"Kid sister."
"You've never told me about your family."
"You haven't told me much about yours. Your dad's a professor at the college, but other than that?"
"My mom, well, she teaches at church and volunteers at the Globe."
"Globe of the Great Southwest. Does she act?"
"Took the part of Juliet's nurse, and the witch in Macbeth."
"Do you act?"
"I did some sort of extra part in the Wizard of Oz. I'm the youngest of six. Four sisters and a brother. One sister's married to an Air Force codebreaker stationed in the Philippines, the others are working their way through school. Denny's working on an engineering degree."
Beryl was suddenly quiet. "My big brother died when I was kind of young."
"Oh." I didn't know what to say to that. "Sorry to hear about that."
"I miss him sometimes. But I think he's happy in heaven."
"That's a good hope to have. I believe in the afterlife, too."
"Yeah. Heaven's a good place."
We came too soon to her house, and her dad faced me at the front door with an impassive expression. Her
mother took Beryl's hand and pulled her inside, hugging her closely.
"So. This is the Mormon boy that has been stalking my daughter for four years."
He didn't seem to be joking.
"Dad?"
"Yes, sir." I said, not cracking a smile.
"What about this polygamy thing? How many wives besides my daughter do you plan on marrying?"
"No, sir. Beryl and I are not anywhere close to discussing marriage in the first place. Yeah, I've had a terrible crush on her since junior high, but we haven't been talking about the future at all. And, in the second place, Mormons don't do polygamy any more."
"Any more?" her mom asked.
"One of my great-great grandfathers lost his wife while crossing the plains to Utah, and when he got to Utah he married a widow with six kids who lost her husband on the way. With the second wife's permission, he married a third woman."
"So, two living wives?"
"Yeah."
"And what do you think of it?" her father took over interrogation again.
"Don't really think about it much. The third wife, from what I understand, was not getting any offers for marriage on account of her health, and was having trouble supporting herself, so it was a way to provide for her without putting her on the street. But there were jealousies."
Beryl's parents looked at each other.
"But you don't do that any more?" her mom asked.
"Why is that?" her dad followed on, in a tone that broached no
nonsense.
"Well, there are several reasons. One is that God told us that, rather than go to war with all the people who thought that polygamy should be a capital offense, polygamy would no longer be required of us."
"Required?" Beryl asked, puzzled.
"It was a different world. A single woman back then was looked on with suspicion and misunderstanding."
Her dad cleared his throat.
Beryl's puzzlement increased. "Huh?"
Beryl's mother hugged Beryl tighter, whispering something to her.
Beryl's face drained color. She turned to her mother. "No!"
I continued, "Anyway, it did help prevent the worst options. When it worked well, it seemed to give women more and better options. And that was what the glory was supposed to be all about -- pure religion is when you help those who need help, and society didn't really have good ways to provide for single women back then."
"Still don't," her mom muttered, and her dad gave her a sideways glance.
"I think we at least have more options now," I continued. "Also, part of the principle was that, if a man were being abusive towards a wife, the wife wouldn't have to stay with him. That principle is still supposed to apply. It helps that modern law recognizes the rights of women better than it did then."
Beryl's mom relaxed a bit, and her dad's expression became a little less stern.
I continued. "Unfortunately, members with fundamentalist ideologies sometimes got things wrong about it and instead of being an opportunity to help, it became a focus of power struggles within those families, and a tool of abuse. Towards the end of the last century, that was happening too often. I tend to think that was the real reason the Lord let the government force us into a position where we had to quit. We weren't doing it right."
"So, you're saying no Mormons marry polygamously any more." Her dad was still pressing.
"There are still members who misunderstand which principles of the Gospel are fundamental, and some of them practice polygamy in secret, or leave the Church to practice it. If members who are doing it secretly are found out, they are excommunicated."
"Well, that could cause problems, too, couldn't it?" her mom questioned.
"Yeah. Unfortunately, we aren't very perfect. We should be making sure that, even if they are excommunicated, we still try to help them, but I think we have trouble doing that too often, as well."
"So, would you ever do it?" Her dad asked.
"Not planning on it. I'm not sure I could avoid the problems that often occur. I hope I don't have to face the question, but I also don't expect to."
"Why not?"
"According to my understanding of the scriptures, it's supposed to be only for exceptionally difficult times. We have scriptures that are pretty explicit about that."
Her dad frowned, and probably a full minute passed while he thought. Then he turned to his wife and something passed between them that I couldn't read. He turned back to me. "Son," her dad said, "I've heard enough good about you from Beryl that I'm going to give you a chance to prove yourself."
I took a deep breath. "I hope you will not be offended that I won't be trying to prove myself. I always do my best to live a moral life and treat all people with respect, and I'll just hope that will be good enough."
He grinned and reached out and shook my hand. "We'll see. We'll see. Well, come in so you and Beryl can study. That's what you came for, I think?"
"Yes, sir."
Donna was standing in the front room, watching the exchange with wide eyes, and Beryl introduced us. The two of them exchanged looks and giggles and grins, and Donna dragged Beryl off into the kitchen to talk for a minute.
While they were gone, I introduced myself more properly to Karl and May, and they introduced
themselves to me.
Then Beryl and Donna came back, and Beryl pulled me away from her parents and over to the couch, where we sat,
spread our books out on the coffee table, and dug in.
TV or Not TV (Typewriter)
This is a minor revision of https://joelrees-novels.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-other-os-9-alternate-reality-calculations.html.
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