Becoming Grey: Episode 33

Chapter 33 

April 15, 2022 

Callie had measured the base, the display board, and the space she needed for her laptop. She had not measured the table. Looking at it now, with somebody else’s project already occupying the far end, she could see where her planning had become unnecessarily optimistic. The board fitted if she angled it. The model fitted if she moved the laptop. Her notebook apparently needed to attend a different event. She tucked it beneath the laptop for the moment and reached for the tape while Juna leaned against her leg, holding Gus by one purple ear. 

“When does it go?” her daughter asked. She had watched the flap move at home often enough to know what ought to happen, and the disconnected cable offended her. Callie moved the model farther from the front edge and explained that she needed to finish setting up first. Juna accepted this until Callie began securing the cable, at which point she asked again. Across the room, somebody tested a microphone with a noise that made both of them look up. The engineering building’s project afternoon had seemed considerably quieter in the email. 

Ryan found them while Callie was trying to tear a piece of tape without losing the end. He wore the sweater she had borrowed the previous Sunday because she had insisted she wouldn’t need a jacket, an argument he had not yet allowed her to forget. He stopped beside the table and looked from the prototype to the photographs on her board. “Hey. This looks official.” 

“There are headings.” Callie handed him the roll, kissed him, and took it back once he had freed the end. She liked how easy that had become, although doing it in the engineering building made her briefly aware of everyone who might be looking. Most of them were occupied with extension leads. “I was promised enough room for everything. Apparently that meant everything except the things I brought.” 

Juna stepped between them and caught Ryan’s attention by pulling his sleeve. “There’s a car over there. It doesn’t have a roof.” She pointed toward a display near the doors, where a student was bending over a small wheeled chassis. Ryan looked in the indicated direction, then back at Callie as she stopped Juna from putting Gus beside the linkage. 

“Want me to take her around while you finish?” he asked. “We can look at the car and come back.” He waited while Callie considered it, keeping his hand available for Juna without taking hers yet. He had watched her at the apartment while Callie collected groceries once, and stayed with her while Callie took a call from Sally another evening. A crowded room required a little more coordination, but he was offering to walk across it. She did not need to construct a crisis around that. 

“Please. I start at one thirty, so come back before then.” Callie checked her phone and showed him the bag beneath her chair. “Water’s in the side pocket. She had lunch, whatever she tells you about being hungry.” She crouched to catch Juna’s attention. “Stay with Ryan, okay? You can look, but you ask before touching anything.” Her daughter nodded while looking toward the car, so Callie waited until she looked back and repeated the important part. This time Juna answered properly, then took Ryan’s hand and immediately tried to lead him toward the wrong aisle. 

Callie watched them negotiate the route around a cluster of students. Ryan moved to the outside when they passed a table with cables hanging down, leaving Juna room beside him. Then somebody asked whether Callie needed the spare chair, and she turned back to her own table. She moved the notebook onto the chair, taped down the supply lead, and finally had both hands free to position the photographs. By the time she looked up again, Ryan was crouched beside the little car while Juna explained something using Gus. Callie could not hear a word of it. She finished putting the date on her results sheet instead of going over to find out. 

Brenda brought Oliver along the aisle a few minutes later, supporting the small platform he used beside the lab bench. He sat within its railing with a folded sheet across his knees. Callie cleared a space at the back corner of the table before Brenda set it down, then moved the laptop so he could see the display. His collar showed above the neck of his shirt when he looked up at the board. From this angle, the lowest photograph was still too high for him to inspect comfortably. 

“You kept the original cable route,” he said, indicating the picture. Brenda leaned closer to hear his next words over the conversation behind her, then checked with Callie that the model was disconnected before going to help a student at the neighboring display. Oliver waited until she had moved. “Could you bring me beside the clamp? I’d like to see what you finally made.” 

Callie put the plug where he could see it and moved a loose pen out of the clear inspection space. She rested her forearm on the table and offered her left palm beside the opening in his platform. He folded his paper, left it on the chair, and stepped aboard. His shoes pressed separately against her skin before he sat, one heel settling into the crease beneath her fingers. She no longer had to stop everything she was thinking to make sense of the contact. She waited for him to settle, brought her right hand underneath, and lifted him the short distance toward the model. 

The table’s edge gave her wrist somewhere to rest while she held him beside the mounting block. Oliver leaned forward, one hand touching the base of her thumb. She felt the slight change in pressure and kept her palm level rather than following his movement. At home she had held the clamp up to a video call so Stuart could see it; doing that now would have moved Oliver along with it. She left the assembly where it was and used her right hand to turn the base instead. “The first version caught the screw underneath. This one’s offset. I put a sleeve around the cable where the clamp holds it.” 

Oliver examined the gap, then asked her to bring him a little lower. She lowered her hand until her wrist rested more comfortably, keeping her fingers clear of the linkage. His trouser leg brushed her palm as he shifted to see around the block. “And the cable can move here without pulling at the connector?” 

“Through the movement I’ve tested.” Callie pointed with her free hand, stopping short of the little loop. “I checked the clearance through the whole travel. There’s enough slack, but it can’t drop into the arm anymore. I’ve got the photographs from both ends of the movement.” She glanced toward his platform, where the folded paper remained. “I can show you those when I put you back.” 

He asked how many cycles she had run, and she gave him the figure from her notebook, then began explaining why she had stopped there. Somebody laughed behind her, covering part of his reply. Callie bent closer and asked him to repeat it. He waited until the noise dropped. “What does that tell you about the original enclosure?” 

She looked at the model while he sat in her hand. Two months earlier she would have wanted to offer him a successful answer as quickly as possible. She had spent enough evenings recording this particular thing to know exactly how far the success extended. “That I have a fix worth testing on it. The original bracket’s different, and the door has more load. Dad fitted the clamp and sent the first results, but we haven’t done enough to call it finished.” She turned the base back so its edge aligned with the tape. “I put that on the board. Under further testing.” 

Oliver looked toward the heading and nodded. Callie returned him to the platform, lowering her fingers beside the opening. When he stood, his weight gathered briefly through his feet; then he stepped off and she could move her hand again. Her fingers had begun to stiffen from holding them still. She flexed them beneath the table while he retrieved his paper. With him seated clear of the mechanism, she checked the empty space around it and reconnected the supply. He watched the first cycle, asked whether she had water for herself, and directed her toward the bottle half hidden behind her display board. 

By one twenty-five, visitors had begun stopping in the aisle. Callie answered a question about the sensor, then another about whether she had made the flap herself. She found that she could manage those conversations easily enough while pointing to the parts. It was the prospect of starting at the beginning, with everybody looking at her, that made her keep checking the opening sentence she had written on the back of her notes. Ryan returned with Juna and a paper cup of water for himself. Her daughter had acquired a round sticker and was determined that Gus should wear it. 

“He’s got fur,” Ryan explained while helping her press it onto his fabric collar instead. He caught Callie’s eye and gave her a small smile. “We’re back. Apparently the car isn’t finished because they forgot the roof.” Juna began correcting him, and he guided her toward the side of the table where she could see without standing in the aisle. Callie took a drink, put the bottle down somewhere Oliver could not be struck if it tipped, and turned toward the people gathering in front of her board. 

She began with the enclosure in Minnesota and the model she had built to investigate its mechanism. The first explanation came out much as she had practiced it, until she heard herself describing the sensor’s output before explaining where the beam went. A woman near the front glanced between the diagram and the actual components. Callie stopped, set her notes down, and picked up the card beside the model. “Sorry. Let me show you what it’s supposed to do first. This is the sensor, and the reflector’s here. When I interrupt the beam with this, the program tells the servo to move the flap.” She passed the card through the gap. The flap rose, paused, and lowered. Juna made a pleased noise that Callie knew was coming and still nearly smiled at. 

With the movement established, the failure was easier to explain. Callie indicated the original route in the photograph, then followed the secured cable on the model without touching it. She described how repeated movement had drawn the loose loop into the arm and shifted the sensor mounting. The program continued running, but it never saw the clear signal it needed before responding again. She showed the marks they had used to check the movement and the results from repeating the original condition. Nobody looked toward her notes now. She had stopped looking at them herself. 

A student carrying a folded event program asked why she hadn’t simply rebuilt the mounting block with something stronger. Callie had considered that, and found herself glad of the evenings she had spent being annoyed by the question. “It might reduce the movement, but the cable would still be catching. I’d rather keep it out of the linkage than depend on the bracket being strong enough to pull against it. I also needed to check that the catching was actually causing the fault before I changed something else.” She pointed out the paired runs, leaving the card beside the base where she could reach it again. 

The woman at the front studied those figures, then asked whether fixing the cable meant the system was reliable now. Callie had wanted that to be true so badly in February that she might have answered too quickly. Today the separate columns on her sheet made the distinction easy to see. She explained the test conditions and the longest run, then indicated the work still listed beneath them. Longer testing, checking the clamp for wear, and repeating the work on the original assembly. She could say it had stopped the fault recurring during those runs. She could not give the mechanism a lifetime guarantee on the strength of an afternoon’s demonstration. 

“Would you change the support as well?” the student asked, looking toward Oliver. He had stepped closer to the back of the table and was bending slightly, evidently realizing that speaking from his full height was unhelpful. 

“Callie ran those tests,” Oliver said. His voice carried across the cleared part of the table, though Callie doubted the people at the back heard him. He looked up at her and waited. She explained what she would inspect next and why strengthening the support might still be useful without replacing the cable fix. The student asked another question, this time addressing her. By the time the little group moved on, she had shown the underside of the base twice, forgotten the sentence she had rehearsed, and discovered she hadn’t needed it. 

The next visitors arrived before she could ask Ryan what he thought. He lifted his cup in her direction, then bent to hear Juna, who was pulling his sleeve again. Callie caught the word water and watched him retrieve the bottle from the bag. Her daughter drank, complained that the sticker was coming off, and became interested in a moving display farther along the aisle. Ryan waited until Callie finished answering someone, pointed out where they were going, and took Juna with him. Callie watched them reach the next table before returning to a question about her diagram. She had been expecting to divide her attention all afternoon. Instead she could let the person finish speaking before deciding what to say. 

When the aisle finally cleared, she sat for a moment and took another drink. Oliver was making a note on his folded paper. Brenda came past with a cable somebody had borrowed and asked how the first group had gone. Callie said she had started in the wrong place. Brenda looked at the model, then at the results sheet she had left open. “Did you get them to the right place eventually?” She waited for Callie’s answer, smiled, and returned the cable to the neighboring table. Callie picked up her notes and crossed out the opening line. She wrote show movement above it, then put the card back beside the sensor. 

Ryan and Juna returned while she was straightening the display. Juna wanted to explain a machine that had made a light go on, although her account included an elephant Callie suspected had nothing to do with it. Ryan supplied the useful detail that she had turned a handle. Then Juna wanted to know whether she could make Mommy’s door go. Callie checked that nobody was waiting, asked Ryan to bring the chair around, and helped her daughter kneel on it beside her. Oliver watched from the far corner, safely beyond the model and the child’s reach. 

“Only the card,” Callie reminded her, putting it into her hand and guiding her wrist toward the gap. “You leave the flap alone. It moves by itself.” Juna interrupted the beam too quickly on the first attempt and immediately wanted to do it again. Callie showed her where to hold it, and this time the flap lifted while her daughter was watching. Juna turned toward Ryan so abruptly that Callie steadied her at the waist. 

“Mommy made it!” she announced. She looked back at the open flap, then at Callie, apparently requiring confirmation that the effect had been properly appreciated. Ryan leaned beside the chair and agreed that it was very good. Juna asked for another turn, managed it without help, and immediately proposed that Gus have one too. Callie declined to put a stuffed dog near the linkage. They settled for letting him watch while Ryan returned the chair and Juna climbed into his lap to inspect the failing sticker. 

Oliver caught Callie’s attention as a woman approached from the next aisle. He introduced Dr. Patel, a colleague who helped supervise an undergraduate instrumentation group. Callie wiped a bit of adhesive from her finger before shaking hands. Dr. Patel had seen the last part of the demonstration and asked how Callie was recording the runs. Callie showed her the notebook, including the pages that predated the neat results sheet. She had considered leaving those at home. Now she was pleased they were merely untidy rather than missing. 

“We’re putting together a small data logger for one of the teaching rigs,” Dr. Patel said, looking through the recorded changes. “Some of the students are moving on next term. Would you be interested in coming to a meeting? There’s assembly and testing to do before anybody gets to be clever with the data.” She returned the notebook and waited while Callie glanced at Ryan and Juna, then back at her. “Oliver says you keep useful records.” 

Callie wanted to agree before somebody reconsidered the offer. She made herself ask when the group met and what preparation she would need. The current meeting time overlapped preschool pickup, although Dr. Patel said the autumn schedule wasn’t settled. Callie explained the conflict without apologizing for it, asked whether she could attend an earlier lab session to learn more, and wrote down the email address. Dr. Patel suggested they arrange a visit after the project afternoon. There was no promise of a place, and Callie would need to find out how the work fitted around her classes. She still checked the address twice before putting the notebook down. 

Oliver watched her add a reminder on her phone. “Send her the test summary too,” he said when Dr. Patel moved on. Callie asked whether he thought she knew enough for the group. He looked toward the prototype. “Enough to have a useful conversation about it. Ask what you don’t know. You managed that quite well today.” He returned to his paper while she stood beside the table, trying not to reopen the calendar immediately. Her next visitor saved her the trouble by asking what the little flap did. 

By the end of the afternoon, the tape had collected lint, Juna’s sticker was on Ryan’s sleeve, and Callie had explained the cable route often enough to hear herself doing it when nobody was asking. Brenda collected Oliver once the aisle cleared, supporting his platform while he reminded Callie to send the summary. Callie thanked him and waited until he was away from the table before moving the display board. Ryan kept Juna occupied sorting the demonstration cards while Callie disconnected the supply, secured the flap, and put the assembly into its box. He took it when she showed him where to hold the base. 

“Thank you for today,” she said, checking beneath the table for anything Juna might have dropped. Ryan told her he’d enjoyed it, though they had missed the end of the car demonstration because Juna needed the bathroom. Apparently she had then insisted on returning to tell the student that the roof was still absent. Callie looked at her daughter, who was trying to carry the bag by a strap longer than she was. Ryan reached down to shorten it before taking it himself. Callie retrieved Gus, found her pen underneath him, and put both where they belonged. 

At the doors, Juna asked whether Ryan was coming for dinner. Callie looked at him over the top of her folded display board. She had the email address in her notebook, photographs to send home, and something new to ask about on Monday. First she needed to eat. “Do you want to? I think there’s enough pasta.” Ryan said yes, and Juna immediately requested a different shape from the one they had at home. Callie explained that the shape was already decided. They headed toward the car while her daughter tried to persuade Ryan that this was a problem somebody ought to fix. 

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