Becoming Grey: Episode 34

Chapter 34

September 19, 2023

The second channel was wrong by almost exactly the same proportion at every setting, which had made it considerably more convincing before Callie checked it against something else. She sat with her notebook open beside the data logger, following the latest column with the blunt end of her pencil. Half a volt, one and a half, two and a half. The reference meter agreed with the source. The logger, apparently determined to be encouraging, reported a little more than they had given it. Across the bench, Ben turned his laptop so she could see the graph.

“We could put a correction in,” he said. “The difference is consistent.” He selected the points, and Callie reached for the diagram beneath her notebook before he could begin changing the scaling. They had already spent part of the previous term arguing over whether a temperature change was real or belonged to the measurement, and she wanted considerably better evidence this time. A neat graph had been persuasive then too.

“Eventually. If we know why.” She found the interface revision and put it beside the readings. “Let me move the input to the other board first. Same cable, same source.” The corner of the diagram curled back beneath her hand. She had printed this one twice, once after discovering the first copy still showed a connection they had removed in May. Now she checked the revision letter out of habit before reaching for a lead. The parts drawers behind her had been reorganized over the summer, but at least nobody had moved the meters again.

Her phone sounded while she was labeling the next run. Callie glanced at the time and automatically began working out what needed switching off before she left. Kindergarten pickup. She had changed the words in the reminder three weeks ago and still expected the preschool’s name when she looked down. Then she saw Ryan’s message beneath it, sent while she was concentrating on the first comparison. He was collecting Juna today. They had discussed it over breakfast, checked it again while he fitted the booster into his car, and confirmed that the school had him on the authorized list. Her thumb hovered over the reply field anyway.

Another message arrived before she typed. He was outside the classroom. Callie wrote thanks, added that she would call when she left campus, and changed her reminder so it would not go off again in ten minutes. The elementary school’s afternoon ended earlier than preschool had, a fact she had known all summer without fully appreciating how inconvenient two thirty could become. Juna considered the new schedule excellent. Callie had spent the first weeks of September discovering how many university activities had been arranged by people who assumed everybody remained available until five.

“Do you need to go?” Ben asked. He had already taken his hand off the mouse and was looking toward the leads as though deciding what he could finish alone.

“No. Ryan’s getting her.” Callie put the phone where she would notice another message without having it beneath the test sheet. She liked being able to say that and keep sitting down. “We’ll switch the boards, then do the same readings. Don’t change the file yet. I want the original values.” Ben made a copy instead, and she wrote the starting conditions before disconnecting anything. There was enough time to find out something useful if she stopped spending it preparing to leave.

Brenda came along the benches while they were setting up, carrying Oliver’s platform with both hands. He had his notebook open on his knees and was looking back toward the group he had just left. Callie cleared the end of her bench, moved her water bottle to the shelf behind her, and waited until Brenda had set him down before sliding the diagram into view. Oliver examined the readings while Brenda asked Ben about the earlier run. The lab smelled faintly of warm equipment and somebody’s reheated lunch, which was supposed to remain outside. Callie had identified the offender without needing an instrument.

“You’ve checked the source at the input?” Oliver asked. Callie turned the notebook and showed him where she had recorded it. He studied both columns, then looked toward the interface. “And you’re about to change what?” She explained the swap, including what would stay in place. He followed her gesture but could not see the board through the loop of cable between them. “Give me a closer look before you do. I want to see which revision you’ve actually got there.”

Callie isolated the supply and disconnected the leads, leaving their labels attached. She offered her left hand beside his platform while Ben shifted the laptop farther along the bench. Oliver put his notebook on the chair and stepped into her palm. His weight gathered briefly through his shoes before he sat near the base of her fingers, turning so he could see the board as she brought him across. She felt the small adjustment without having to look down to identify it. The first time, every movement had made her reconsider what her hand was doing. Now she rested her forearm on the bench, let her other hand support her wrist, and continued explaining the connections.

Oliver leaned toward the board, bracing against her thumb. She could feel the edge of his sleeve where it touched her skin and the firmer pressure of one heel as he changed his angle. Holding him still was easier here than carrying him through the corridor, but she would have to move the cable before he could see underneath it. She released her wrist with her right hand and eased the loose loop aside. He followed it with his eyes, then asked her to move her thumb.

“You sat on that side,” she told him, lowering it enough to clear his view. She kept her palm level while he leaned back to look up at her. Ben glanced over, apparently uncertain whether he was supposed to be listening. Callie turned the board slightly with her free hand. “There. You can see the connector and I get to keep all my fingers.”

Oliver returned his attention to the components. “An arrangement I support. Which board was rebuilt after the revision?” He indicated the little assembly nearest him. Callie began to answer, stopped, and checked the mark beside the connector. This was the older of the pair. The drawing beside her notebook described the newer one. She had checked the paper carefully enough and then assumed both boards matched it. She explained that, finding the earlier diagram while he waited in her hand. Around them, a chair scraped and somebody called across the lab. She missed Oliver’s reply, bent closer, and asked him to repeat it.

“Your swap is still useful,” he said once she could hear. “But write down which version is going where. Otherwise you’ll have a result and a new argument.” He asked to be set beside the drawings while she worked. Callie cleared the inspection mat to the left of the equipment, lowered her palm against its edge, and waited while he stood. His hand pressed against her thumb as he stepped onto the mat. Once he was clear, she moved the older diagram where he could approach it and placed the loose leads beyond his path. He walked to the component values while she labeled the boards A and B in her notes.

They ran the comparison with Oliver back on his platform before reconnecting power. The discrepancy followed board A. Callie recorded all three readings, returned the connections to their first arrangement, and repeated the middle setting. There it was again. It was tempting to announce that they had found the fault, but they had established where it followed, which was not quite the same thing. Ben repeated the swap himself while she read the procedure aloud. His readings agreed closely enough that she could stop wondering whether she had attached something differently the first time.

“So the logger isn’t adding it,” Ben said, putting the last figure into the file. He looked pleased until Callie pointed toward the older diagram. The two versions had different values in part of the conditioning stage. They needed to check what had actually been fitted and compare the board’s input and output before deciding whether the difference belonged to that change or something else. He looked at the graph again, then saved it with the board labels in the filename. “Fine. Now the wrong number has an address.”

Dr. Patel joined them while Callie was writing the next test. She listened to the explanation, asked Ben to show her the repeat run, and looked through Callie’s notes. They would need the comparison across more of the intended range after checking the fitted components. Callie marked that beneath the three settings so she would not mistake today’s evidence for a complete calibration. Dr. Patel asked her to turn the notes into a procedure for the group and walk everyone through it at the next session. Callie pulled up her calendar before answering. Tuesday, the same agreed hours. She could do that, provided the walkthrough happened at the beginning rather than becoming something they started when everybody else was nearly finished.

“Send it beforehand,” Dr. Patel said. “Then we can spend the session using it.” She moved on to the next bench, leaving Callie with a list that looked considerably less optional than it had a minute earlier. Callie wrote down the deadline, checked that Ben had saved the untouched readings, and began putting away the leads. Oliver asked for the diagrams to be left with him until Brenda returned. She positioned them within his reach and took a photograph of the labels and connections before dismantling the setup. Whoever used the equipment tomorrow would have enough information without needing to reconstruct her afternoon.

Outside the building, she called Ryan. Juna answered loudly enough that Callie moved the phone away from her ear. She needed to come home because Ryan had drawn the classroom wrong. In the background he sounded willing to discuss amendments, which Juna apparently regarded as insufficient. Callie promised she was leaving, listened to the beginning of an explanation involving a cupboard, and waited until Ryan got the phone back before asking whether pickup had gone all right. It had. Juna had come out carrying her cardigan because wearing it would have interfered with carrying a leaf. The cardigan and leaf had both reached the apartment. Callie considered that a successful handoff and went to find her car.

When she opened the apartment door, Juna was kneeling on a chair beside Ryan with a sheet of paper spread across the table. Crayons occupied the space where Callie’s notebook usually went. Gus sat on the school folder, supervising an apple core. Her daughter looked up long enough to greet her, then pointed at a rectangle on the page. “He made that a window. It’s the cupboard.” She had more drawing beneath her fingernails than on several sections of the paper, and one sock was coming off her heel.

“I was working from verbal instructions,” Ryan said. He had a green crayon in his hand and a smear of the same color near his wrist. “The brief changed.” Callie put her bag beside the couch, bent to kiss him, and looked over his shoulder at the picture. Juna pulled it toward herself before her mother could examine the disputed rectangle properly. Ryan put the crayon down and waited. He had evidently learned that asking a second question before the first explanation ended simply made Juna begin again.

“The window’s here. By where we sit. And that’s where Maya sits, remember?” Juna looked directly at Ryan, requiring him to recognize somebody Callie had heard about only in connection with a water bottle. He indicated a different chair and was corrected. Then she asked whether they could draw the banana person. Ryan looked at Callie and began smiling before Juna accused him of making it up. Apparently one of the children had worn a yellow raincoat with the hood up inside, and Juna had decided he looked like a banana. Callie had missed the original performance, though the explanation included a demonstration that nearly took her daughter off the chair.

Maggie came out of her room carrying a laptop and a small stack of cards. She stopped to retrieve one from beneath a crayon before asking whether anyone needed the table later. Her group was testing a navigation prototype that evening, and she had finally recruited someone who had not already been told how it worked. Callie asked whether the previous participant had found the booking screen. Maggie said yes, through a route nobody in the group had intended, which was irritatingly useful. She collected her keys, reminded Juna that her apple core needed to go in the bin, and left while Juna was still considering whether that instruction applied immediately.

Callie washed her hands and opened the fridge. She had planned rice, vegetables, and the chicken she had moved down from the freezer that morning. Ryan joined her at the counter after helping Juna relocate the drawing. He took out the cutting board without asking which cupboard held it, then waited while Callie found a clean knife. They had spent enough evenings in this kitchen to know where to stand when somebody opened the dishwasher. She shifted out of his way automatically and handed him the carrots.

“I can do pickup next Tuesday too,” he said, setting one on the board. “If that helps.” Callie was reading the notice from Juna’s folder by then, trying to establish whether the requested supplies needed to arrive tomorrow or merely sometime this week. She had her phone open to the lab calendar beside it. The next session was fixed, but she still needed to ask about a separate group meeting that might move.

“I don’t know yet. There might be another afternoon. And I can’t promise I’ll be back at the same time.” She turned the notice over, found that the date was on the first side after all, and went back. Beside her, Ryan stopped cutting. She noticed without immediately understanding why, then looked at him when he said he could leave it with her. “Leave what?”

“Pickup.” He nudged the chopped pieces into a pile with the flat of the knife. “I wasn’t trying to rearrange your week. I thought you needed the same time again.” Juna called from the table to ask whether cupboards could be green. Callie answered that hers could, then realized she had agreed to something about the drawing rather than an actual paint decision. Ryan resumed cutting, more quietly now, and she put the notice down before making the conversation worse by continuing to divide it between three things.

“I do need Tuesday. I meant I might need another day as well, and I haven’t sorted it out.” She moved the phone away from the edge of the counter. “I’m not saying don’t. I’m saying I need to check the other meeting, and I don’t want you changing shifts before I know.” She had thought she was being careful about his time. Listening to what she had actually said, she could understand how he had arrived somewhere else.

Ryan looked at her, then toward the calendar. “Okay. Tuesday I’m already free. Anything else, tell me when you know and I’ll check.” He passed her a piece of carrot when she reached toward the board, an old habit that saved him from having her fingers beside the knife. “And if you’re later, send a message. I had no idea whether your nearly finished meant ten minutes or another hour.”

Callie promised to give him an actual time next time. She confirmed Tuesday in the calendar, left the other afternoon unassigned, and returned the notice to the folder. Ryan began telling her about pickup while she put the rice on. Juna had stopped halfway through getting into the car because she needed to explain why her leaf was special. He had thought this could continue once she was strapped in. Apparently the leaf required daylight. Callie knew the precise tone he meant when he imitated the instruction, though his version made Juna call across the room that he was doing it wrong.

He asked about the lab once she had the chicken cooking. Callie explained the two boards and how the difference had moved when they exchanged them. Ryan remembered the display she’d brought home before summer and asked whether it was the same box with the little screw terminals. It was. She showed him the photograph without starting on the component values, then told him Dr. Patel wanted her to run the next calibration walkthrough. He smiled, wiped his hands before touching her phone, and enlarged the labels she’d added.

“You spent weeks complaining that nobody wrote down which wire was which,” he said. “Now you get to make them.” He handed the phone back while Callie explained that this was not quite the responsibility she had been given, though she intended to include it anyway. He kissed her cheek on his way to get the plates. She returned to the pan, pleased enough that she nearly forgot the rice needed turning down.

Juna brought the classroom drawing to dinner and was persuaded to leave it on the empty chair rather than beside her plate. Halfway through eating, Callie asked who had helped put away the art things. The answer arrived with an indignation she hadn’t expected. Maya had given out the paper. Juna had wanted to do it, and she had put her hand up, but the teacher had picked Maya anyway. Ryan continued eating without interrupting. Callie looked toward the folder on the counter, thinking of the notice about classroom supplies and the list she still needed to make.

“You’ll probably get a turn another day,” she said. “I don’t think everybody can do the same job at once.” She reached for her water while Juna put down her fork. Her daughter’s expression had changed from telling her about something to trying to make her understand it, which was familiar enough that Callie stopped reaching.

“But I wanted to today. I was right there.” Juna pushed a grain of rice toward the edge of her plate with one finger. “I put my hand up first.” She waited, watching Callie rather than Ryan. Callie turned her chair a little toward her daughter, leaving the notice on the counter, and asked her to tell her what had happened before the paper came out. There was apparently a whole part involving glue that she had skipped.

The explanation took longer than handing out paper could possibly have taken. Juna had put the glue away, which in her understanding should have qualified her for the next job. Maya had been standing by the shelf. The teacher had asked Maya to carry the paper, and Juna had waited with her hand raised until there was nothing left to carry. Callie asked whether the teacher had seen her. Juna didn’t know. That seemed to be part of the problem. She had followed the instruction about putting her hand up and received no useful result at all.

Callie told her she could ask tomorrow how the jobs were chosen and say she wanted a turn giving things out. She could not promise that tomorrow’s paper belonged to Juna, however strongly her daughter appeared to believe the position was vacant. Juna considered this while eating another piece of chicken, then asked whether she could give out something else. Callie said that sounded like a question for her teacher too. Ryan passed the vegetables without adding another explanation. By the time Juna requested more rice, she had moved on to reporting that one of the glue lids was blue even though all the other ones were white.

After dinner, Ryan cleared the plates while Callie wiped the table and rescued the drawing from its chair. He needed to finish laundry at his apartment before his early shift tomorrow. Juna followed him to the door to ask whether they would finish drawing the people. He looked toward Callie, and they agreed he would come over after work the following evening if Juna still wanted help. She informed him that he could only do clothes because he made the heads wrong. Ryan accepted his reduced responsibilities, kissed Callie goodbye, and went down the hall carrying the book he’d left there the night before.

Callie took the empty chair beside her daughter and pulled the drawing between them. Her bag remained by the couch, with the procedure notes zipped inside. She knew what needed doing later; the deadline was in her calendar and the measurements were saved. Juna handed her a brown crayon and pointed to a shape near the classroom door. Callie asked whether that was the cupboard Ryan had mistaken for a window. Her daughter looked at her with considerable disappointment. That was where the bags went. The cupboard was over there, and if Mommy listened, she would show her where the glue belonged too.

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