Timecachers (4 page)

“How are things in the corporate world?” Adam asked through the smoothly descending car window.

“Stifling, as usual,” she replied.

“Has Nutso scheduled your breaks out of existence? You’re not going to catch a ration from him for not working through lunch, are you?”

“Since when does he have a clue about how long it takes to do anything? Anyway, he’s off this afternoon to go on a geocaching outing with his buddies. Two carloads of camo-clad pseudo-geeks following their GPSr’s from one light post to the next for twelve hours.”

“Yeah,” Adam chuckled, “racing each other to be first to find a Tupperware container. At least you should have a productive afternoon without Nutso around to interrupt. I know you are anxious to finish off this project.”

“Right now I’d like to finish off a sandwich. Let’s grab some chow while you show me this space compass gizmo.”

“That’s the plan. Tom and Sal are meeting us later at Poet’s,” Adam said. “We can get something there.”

“Poet’s is fine with me. I’m not picky, especially when you’re buying,” she said with a grin. Alice hopped in to the passenger seat, her jeans whispering as they slid across the leather upholstery. The light, fragrant scent of her perfume pleasantly comingled with the familiar electronic smell Adam’s vehicle always seemed to have.

Adam steered the Yukon in the direction of Dead Poets, a popular lunch spot for the corporate crowd. It was already past the usual lunch hour, so there were plenty of open parking spots when they pulled into Poets. Adam grabbed the pink electrostatic bag containing the LANav and some documents as they headed in. Upon entering, they caught the eye of the waitress who gave them a quick wave and motioned for them to take any one of the several open tables.

Dead Poets restaurant had previously been a greasy little place called Mom’s Luncheonette until Delaware’s corporate-friendly taxes enticed many large financial and pharmaceutical companies to move their headquarters to the state. When folks began flocking to Delaware for the jobs, the name was upgraded along with the décor and menu to be more attractive to the professional crowd. The place’s claim to fame was that it served many of the cast and crew of the movie “Dead Poets Society” which was filmed in the area back in the late eighties. The stainless steel and red vinyl seat covers were gone, replaced with heavily polyurethaned yellow oak tables, polyester seat covers, and ceiling fans, along with strategically placed movie photos of Robin Williams, Ethan Hawke, and Peter Weir. The diner was well-lit and served delicious food, so it managed to avoid the fate of the many small local establishments put out of business by the fast food mega-chains that cropped up.

They slid into a nearby booth, and the waitress quickly appeared with menus in hand. “Hi, guys. Do you need a menu or do you know what you want?” She recognized them as regulars, but didn’t know their names. Delaware folks tend to have a friendly, southern manner, but not so annoyingly friendly as to intrude into each other’s personal business. They declined the menus, ordering from memory, and let her know that two more would be joining them.

“So let me see this thing before Sal gets here and breaks it,” Alice said.

Adam removed the TSO LANav from its protective bag and slid it across the table for Alice to examine. Until today, no one on the team except Adam had gotten any hands-on time with the LANav. Adam was convinced he had selected the right group for the project, but only Alice had definitely committed so far. He hoped to get a solid confirmation from the other two engineers at this meeting.

The device measured about three inches by five inches, was nearly two inches thick and enclosed in a brushed aluminum case. There was an LCD screen that occupied nearly three-quarters of the unit’s face, and the top edge of the device extended at a thirty degree angle into a glass-covered triangular wedge, adding another inch to its dimensions. Just above the LCD screen was a small, round indentation, with holes like the speaker on a cell phone, and a small round hole near the bottom. The bottom edge had a small sliding door, covering what appeared to be a micro-USB connector, and the back of the case had another round array of holes, about the size of a quarter. On the left-hand side there was a single button.

Alice noted the thickness of the device and its hefty weight. “Not exactly streamline, is it? No mistaking it for an iPad.”

“Probably ten times the circuitry of a pad computer. Multi-layered, of course.”

“What sort of power source? Double-A batteries?”

“That glass wedge extending from the top is a solar cell that charges an ultra-capacitive barium-titanate based battery. It’s supposed to be able to out-perform traditional batteries by a factor of ten. The wedge also houses the antenna circuitry. For all the bleeding-edge technology TSO has packed into it, it’s amazingly small.”

Alice shrugged acquiescence but continued with her critical examination. “Only one button—the power switch? Does the documentation give us more detail about the user interface?”

“A little, but the LCD screen is a touch screen, so the functionality will be controlled by the software and the LCD will indicate where to touch, depending on the current application the device is running. And yes, the button is a power switch, or more accurately a stand-by switch, since the device is always on. The button just enables the touch screen and turns on the backlight. There’s a USB connector on the bottom, but that’s only for inputting maps and waypoints, and updating the firmware,” Adam explained. “It may be redundant, since it has its own proprietary communication protocols built-in. Firmware upgrades, waypoints, and overlay maps can be sent to the unit directly from TSO. In a terrestrial application, or anywhere you can access a communications satellite, it has sat-phone capabilities for voice and data, which is the reason for the speaker and microphone. You can even do SMS text messaging.”

Alice snickered. “Handy. So astronauts can text each other while they’re flying between planets, huh? I can imagine the messages—OMG IM N SPACE RU2? Seriously, this unit looks like it’s permanently sealed. I take it we aren’t going to be doing any quality testing of the components or serviceability?”

“No, we aren’t. We are doing field user application testing only, and recording our user experiences. Ed Odan supplied the testing scenario and wants some feedback on what might be causing the anomalies they’ve noticed, but other than that it’s all dumb-user testing. The technology is just barely beyond theory, so many of the components are proprietary. No established standards to test against.”

“Usually that’s pretty boring stuff, just doing the UAT part. Since you took the job, I assume it’s not going to be typical end-user testing.”

“It’s certainly going to be different than any other testing we’ve ever done. I already mentioned to you that we’ll be working in remote areas of the country; as you know, the scenario requires us to travel to Georgia. We’re going to be the first ever to use this device. It has the potential to replace nearly every current form of electronic navigation. This could be an opportunity to be part of something history-making, not to mention the marketing value it will give our testing services.”

“Now you’re starting to sound like our old pal John Overton.” Alice smirked, anticipating Adam’s reaction to her jibe.

He rose to the bait. “Don’t even go there. John would take on any project we could do for a buck. I’d like to grow the company for the benefit of us all, but there are limits. You know my philosophy is to offer a quality service that we can expect to charge for accordingly. I think this contract will give us the credibility to begin testing for more of the emerging technology companies, getting more interesting assignments rather than just testing to see if the next MP3 player is easy enough for junior to use. More of the stuff you, I, and the others really want to spend our time doing.”

“I’m all for that,” Alice agreed. “It would be great to only work on the things we enjoy. Not sure if that’s possible, but it sounds great. It also suits me to be working outside for a while. Traipsing around in the mountains of Georgia instead of sitting in some cubicle or my home office sounds wonderful, almost more like a vacation.”

“Don’t expect to get off too easy, Alice. I’m with you as far as enjoying working outdoors, but this customer wants very detailed notes on our user experience, and I’m counting on you to put all our documentation together for them into a professional report. Can you imagine if they got a look at Sal’s notes? ‘Tried it; broke it. Went hiking and used a compass instead.’”

“Ha! That’s Sal alright. Don’t worry; I’m used to translating Sal-speak into a professional report.”

The food orders arrived, and Adam and Alice discussed the challenges of conducting their testing in remote locations. Being without power for over a week would mean that they would have to resort to manual note taking and transcribe them when they returned. They were also both going to have to break out their camping gear, which needed to be checked out after being stored away for the winter. They were discussing whether or not they would need to pack any cold weather gear for this time of year in Georgia when they heard Sal’s voice boom at them as he and Tom entered the restaurant. “Greetings, fellow space-travelers! When do we blast-off for Appalachian galaxy?”

Adam chuckled. “More like the Chattahoochee constellation.”

Chapter four

S
alvador Lolliman was a wiry, energetic, and talkative engineering technician. A native of Camden, New Jersey, he conformed to the stereotype of a loud, crass, and short-tempered Jersey urbanite. His short stature, barely five foot five, and a receding hairline thirty years beyond his twenty-three years, caused Sal to endure more than his share of harassment which he learned to counter by preemptive attack. He had the aggressiveness of a Boston Terrier, the tiny canine who shows no fear even when confronting dogs several times his size. Sal would say anything to anyone. To him, tact and political correctness were unknown concepts. Fortunately, no matter how many inappropriate or off-color jokes he told, or how many times he flew into a rage at someone for no good reason, he could project enough positive energy to power a healthy amount of charisma. Sal had an extremely sharp mind, and could quickly comprehend even some of the most complex technology. Regrettably, he was not a details man, losing interest with mundane tasks, which prevented him from becoming a truly exceptional engineer. Nevertheless, Adam recognized his agile mind had a lot to offer the team, and his exuberant personality was contagious to the others in the group, including Adam. Things never got boring when Sal was around, whether he was ripping off lousy jokes or ripping off some poor guy’s head for disagreeing with him.

Tom Woody was almost the exact opposite. He epitomized single-mindedness, and would endlessly analyze the details of a project until no facet remained unexplored, with the stoic resolve of a spider relentlessly reweaving its web each day. Smalltalk did not come as easily to Tom; he was a thinker, a southern gentleman, a modern Thomas Jefferson. He usually sat quietly through engineering meetings, tapping his briar pipe in contemplation until he was asked for details about whatever project he was currently working on. Everyone who knew Tom knew not to do that unless they were prepared to spend hours listening to a highly technical monologue, eloquently articulated in his dulcet, Virginia voice.

Tom had spent many years as a software engineer until he became disgruntled with what he called the “assembly line” conditions that programmers now worked under. He decided his talents would be better put to use fleshing out software bugs than cranking out code. Adam knew Tom’s engineering talents were more than adequate for this project. He also knew Tom was an accomplished backpacker and rock climber, had a keen interest in American history, and had even had a few papers published on several historical topics. It didn’t surprise Adam that Tom’s background got such a positive reaction from Ed Odan.

As they slid into the booth, Sal winked at the waitress and barked his order. “Cuppa Joe. Black, extra sweet, Sugar.”

“Anything for you, hon?” she asked Tom.

“Just water, thank you, ma’am.”

Once the greetings were exchanged and everyone had a chance to get a good look at the LANav, Adam began to ease into discussing the device’s capabilities. Initially, he downplayed the anomalies, certain that Tom and Sal would insist on hearing more about them. For now though, he did not want the conversation to get sidetracked by their curiosity. Both Tom and Sal had tentatively committed to being part of the project and he did not want them needlessly doubting their decision. Everyone in the team was senior enough to realize that checking out undocumented functionality went way beyond the scope of a typical testing scenario. It amounted to research, and the team would know that the demands put on them could be excessive. As professionals, they had to be aware of the work requirements before committing to a project. It was important for independent contractors to budget their time to make a decent living. On the other hand, they were all highly interested in breakthrough technology, and Adam hoped that the innovation of this device would stimulate their curiosity enough to compensate for the additional workload.

Adam began, “The standard part of this testing will be a field test of the device’s functionality, so we will begin by conducting a set of navigational exercises and record how well, or how badly, the TSO LANav performs. In this case, our testing script is to perform end user activities that require us to plot a course to preselected landmarks in the national forest. We will also use a traditional GPSr, compass, and topographical maps to compare our actual location to the LANav. Once we are on site, we will select a few additional locations where our GPSr’s don’t perform very well and see if the LANav will work. Finding the GPSr dead spots should be easy in that part of the country with so much overhead foliage in early spring. Since we only have one device, we will do all the testing as a group, but we will have to split up to scout out the GPSr dead zones. Tom, you are probably the best orienteer of the group, so we will use your expertise to plot out some points using compass and topographic maps.”