XX

Things settled out over the next week or so. Concrete was poured, electricity was brought into a panel and distributed through the dungeon, duct work went in carrying away stale air and bringing in fresh. A small building, matching the look of the house and old garden shed was erected to hide the top of the lift and the fans for the ventilation system. Phone lines were brought in and a system installed that let us call between phones as well as allow several calls at once. We all took a few rides on the new lift, then it assumed it’s intended use of moving heavy, bulky, or awkward loads from the ground level down or up as the need arose.

The servers arrived and were installed in two tall racks, freeing up some floor space. Network cables were run throughout the dungeon, the house and the carriage house. Lisa was everywhere, installing the older computers, re-purposed as work stations and integrating them into the network. Desks, filing cabinets and other office furniture were brought down and wrestled into place.

All of this was infrastructure and didn’t push our work forward, but we were finally ready to get back to it. The first samples of the new chips arrived. Jennifer and I spent a lot of hours building a new headset and the new flat panels, both remarkably compact. One problem became immediately obvious, the tiny chips were a pain to work with because of the smaller size. We had to do some of the work under a binocular micrscope. But we managed to get them done.

Then came testing. The headset built into a bulky set of headphones worked a treat, but other than size was the same as the old skullcap style. The flat panels were where the difference became obvious. With Lisa’s new software, we could get clear images of any part of the body just by arranging the panels on either side of the part in question. The only issue was they needed to be parallel to each other. A holding fixture was cobbled together to help with that.

Cory was practically jumping up and down as he viewed one crystal clear image after another. He easily spotted an old football injury in Robert’s knee and evidence of a broken bone, long since healed, in Lisa’s arm. He pointed out the beginnings of carpal tunnel syndrome in his own wrist.

“Claudia, can we have a look at your feet?” he asked.

“I don’t see why not.” she said , starting to remove her shoes.

“Don’t remove your shoes.” Cory said, “I think this will ‘see’ through them.”

Cory studied the images of Claudia’s feet intently, asking for small changes to study blood vessels, tendons, and finally just the bones.

“Do your feet hurt sometimes?” he asked, “Especially when you have been on them for awhile?”

“Yes.” she replied, “But I have so much trouble finding shoes that fit properly.”

“You, my munchkin,” he said, “have the beginnings of gout, a side affect of your condition.”

“What?” she yelped.

Cory was in Doctor mode now. He mentioned some foods to avoid and a few that might help and prescribed a pill to be taken daily.

“If you doubt my quackery, you can check with your own doctor,” he said, “but at the current stage it’s almost impossible diagnose with conventional methods.”

“This is mind blowing.” he said to all of us, “It does everything that an x-ray, cat scan, and MRI does and does it better. How long before we have a production prototype ready?”

“A couple of months should do it.” I said, “the only proprietary bits are the scanner panels and Lisa’s software. The computer or computers are practically off the shelf items.”

“We still need to do what we can to prevent some Chinese whiz kid from reverse engineering the thing.” said Conner.

We kicked ideas around for a while then decided to go out for dinner to celebrate. Dinner, like most meals we took as a group was also a working meeting, with ideas flying back and forth across the table. Our waitress had to remind us that they were closing before we left. Back at the house, we gathered in the living room. As was usual, the conversation died out to replaced by moans, groans, and gasps, punctuated by squeals and clench jaw hissing screams.

Partners changed frequently, I had to laugh a little when I caught sight of Claudia riding Cory. He seemed to be over his reluctance, or maybe it was being free of the scrutiny of school. Much later, we gathered our scattered clothes and staggered off to our individual beds more or less. In the end Jill slept with Jennifer and I, and Robert and Conner were with Lisa. I heard Claudia’s cackle from Cory’s room.

In the morning I found Cory at the kitchen table cradling a cup of coffee, looking like he’d been pulled through a knot hole. I raised an eyebrow.

“Claudia kept her promise.” he said in an exhausted monotone.

“Promise?”

“Did her considerable best to screw me to death.” he said.

“Looks like she nearly succeeded.” I said in a dry voice, “ask her about Ricky, a kid who tried to blackmail us, sometime.”

Claudia came bounding down the stairs.