The Maze of Madison: Chapter Thirteen - The Solutions of Opposites

Chapter One: So it Begins
Chapter Two: Into the Dark
Chapter Three: Confounded by a Lock of Stone
Chapter Four: The Ponderous Path Home
Chapter Five: Fleeing the Immolation
Chapter Six: Weathering the Firestorm
Chapter Seven: An Aftermath of Exhaustion and Cinders
Chapter Eight: The Bitter Cold Night That Lasted a Month
Chapter Nine: Deals with the Dav-Vel
Chapter Ten: The Dav-vel's Due
Chapter Eleven: Without a Solution
Chapter Twelve: With Potential

Chapter Thirteen: The Solutions of Opposites

I had sent Tobias an tink to come over in two days after school. I had an idea. I needed time to make it a reality. Tobias could be fun, but he could be a distraction. I went to the fab lab at school and went to work.

The school had a lab with fabers - combinations of CNC machines, 3d printers, robotic assemblers and more - for students to use. Most people had small and simple ones at home: they were as common as washing machines, toasters, food printers and ovens. However, these were industrial strength ones and had far more materials to work with. Which was the downside of the ones at home: families had to pay for what they used and if there was no need to, say, platinum all the time, there was no way someone's family was going to buy it. The school, being well funded like all schools were on Madison, and I hoped throughout the USA, we had the materials we needed any time we needed them in the fablab.

The fablab allowed us to make pretty much anything and all students, at least on Madison, needed to know how to use it. The reasoning was there was no way of knowing one way or another what was needed on an alien world and everyone needed to know from a young, yet at least mildly responsible age, how to craft, fab or make whatever they needed to survive.

The really nice thing about the fablabs at school were that they could make both electronics and photonics, including power supplies. And today I needed that. Except for certain applications, electronics had been phased out of consumer grade technology decades ago. Computing was largely done with photonic devices. They tended to be more robust in high radiation environments, hence, when they were developed in the first place. Shielding a power supply is far, far easier than an entire computing system. Flipping a bit in electronics is far, far easier by cosmic rays than in photonics.

The materials used tended to be less toxic to the environment as well. So, yeah! for environmental responsibility. And doubly so when you had kids having printed whatever they wanted. There were very good recyclers, but there was always the problem of kids, even those who are six decades old, leaving behind things, sometimes intentionally.

It took me most of the next several days to build what I wanted. I had the first prototype out in part of a day, but it didn't do what I wanted it to. It almost did. That meant I threw it back in the recycler and then tried again. And again. And again. And again. Almost working working means someone was only ten percent done. I had to postpone meeting with Tobias. That rather annoyed him, but I knew this was going to be worth it since cracking the code of the door we had found in the cave was going to require this or an analytical engine. And we were not going to get a clean analytical engine.

When I was finally done, I turned on my contraption and did some testing and it seemed to be working. That was good. I meant I was done because I was about to give up. Whatever I had was going to have to work. I tinked to Tobias to meet me after school at the library. I reserved a room with full privacy. Some teens were not allowed to use those rooms. Fortunately, I was not one of the banned. Nor was Tobias.

The library had set up a temporary cleaning station in its airlock. They also provided temporary slippers and lockers to people so as to not bring in their dirty, ashen shoes inside. I went and found the librarian, just to confirm the reservation hadn't been bumped. That annoyed him: we used our boosters to check such things and the bots that governed the library under the librarian were more than capable. The librarian was officially in charge, but really just handled the emergency issues a bot might get stuck on. I liked people more than bots: hack me, jerk.

The room was already available. The room was already available and I went in. I set up and got everything working. I was soon not alone and nodded to my guest. I sat down and waited. It was longer than it ought to have been: I had been early. My guest made a habit of being early. And Tobias was not going to be thrilled with my guest's presence.

And Tobias was not. When Tobias came, pretty much on time, he made a grimace when he saw Tristan. That was unnecessary and unkind. I tinked a gentle emotional rebuke to Tobias. Turning to Tristan, I nodded and linked myself to the device. Tristan linked himself as well. I uploaded everything on our trip and it projected on the wall. Tobias was horrified and started to become angry. I glared at him and tinked at him to relax. Then I unlinked from the projector and let Tristan take over.

And he did. The imagery as he ripped through the data, models and commentary, experiential and verbal/mental faster than anything other than an analytical engine could. It was psychedelic was watch. However, it was headache inducing, while amazingly fascinating. Like a train wreck of data and imagery turned into a less than legal use of post traumatic stress disorder medicinals. However, it was working.

The problem with working with Tristan was if you spoke to him, he was slow. If you opened yourself up to tinking with him, it was like standing in front of a spillway on a dam and trying to drink. Because of what his biological parents had done and the doctors were unable to reverse, Tristan's brain just operated differently. We needed a filter. We needed a way for him to communicate with us without being verbal and without being directly linked via our boosters. This was it.

I could have written some software, but I didn't have the patience and, honestly, not my best skill. Tristan would not have been willing to sit and test it forever either. He might have been slow in person, but he was wildly impatient mentally. When your brain moved almost as fast as a software bot, that was understandable. However, I needed his help and...here we were.

Tobias moved from annoyed and irritable to surprised to fascinated. Thank all that was good and light for that. Tristan ran back and forth from the entrance to the cave all the way up to the door and back many times. Then he began working on the door. It was amazing to watch. It was like watching a fractal come alive and grow on the wall. It was...stunning. His thought processes were so...alien. And beautiful in their uniqueness.

Then as fast as he went, he stopped. The disks on the door had been moved into place. It had taken him twenty minutes. It did not feel that long, but it felt exhausting.

Tristan then struggled to speak, "Euler's number. Pi. Golden ratio. Fourth significant digit. Base 8."

Tobias and I looked at each other. Was it the key? Or had I wasted poor Tristan's time? We knew what we were going to have to do.

I opened myself up Tristan via my booster to express my sincere gratitude and to my delight, so did Tobias. He did feel that way, which was delightful. Then we were hit with a new problem. One we should have expected, but didn't. I felt ashamed that I had not anticipated it.

Tristan wanted to come with us.