“Mister Bill! Mister Bill! Look out, Mister Bill!” Jim absolutely, always said that in a high squeaky voice every time he saw Billy. Billy didn’t get it, not really, but he didn’t care. It made him feel good and Dad always chuckled when he heard it.
“What’s shakin’, Mister Bill?” asked Jim. “How are you, kiddo?”
“I got up to level two on the chess thing and I finished that book and I found the place where you said I could download more and I struck out Bates and… what’s that?”
Billy stooped to look at the thing on the coffee table. It was a rectangular box, about the size of a small book; maybe a little thicker. It had what looked like a small lens in the center of the side that was facing up and there were four unmarked jacks on the thing, lined up below the lens like bared teeth. The whole thing had a handmade but professional appearance.
“That, Mister Bill, is a failed experiment. We were just talking about it when you came in.”
“What’s it do?”
“It’s supposed to be a kind of assistant for people at work. It remembers phone numbers, and names and when you’re supposed to do things, and where you put stuff—things like that.”
“How’s it work?”
“You should be able to just hang it up where it can see you and it watches and listens to what you do at work. It’s supposed to figure out what’s important and remember it so if you want to know somebody’s phone number or address later on, you don’t have to look it up. You just ask the box.”
“Neat. So what’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know. It starts out all right but then it seems like after a while it forgets stuff. Well, not really forgets stuff but matches things up in a weird way. We had this one on test in one guy’s office for about three weeks. One day he asked it to call his mother and it called the vice president, so we pulled the plug.”
“So it gets the wrong answers.”
“In a nutshell.”
“Huh.”
Speaking of wrong answers reminded Billy of the incident with Miss Barstow and of the note. He rummaged around in his pockets until he found it and pulled it out. Dad and Jim recognized the form.
“Uh-oh, Mister Bill,” said Jim in that squeaky voice. “Watch out for that steamroller!”
“Miss Barstow, again?” asked Dad and held out his hand for the paper.
“Uh-huh,” said Billy and passed it over to him. Dad glanced at the form, then at his watch, and passed the note to Jim.
“We’ve got at least an hour yet. Let’s go make dinner while you tell me about it,” said Dad.
Dad and Jim moved around the kitchen with the ease of long practice. Billy sat at one end of the kitchen table and doodled squares and circles on the top with his finger as he spoke. “See, it all started at lunchtime with Billy Farlini,” he said. “I had peanut butter and he had cheese and he doesn’t like cheese so he threw out his cheese and then he wanted my peanut butter.”
“Oh?” Dad turned from his work at the counter. “Did he steal yours?”
“No. Nothing like that. He wanted me to share, he said. That was OK with me ’cause I had other stuff anyway. So, I did this share thing, you know? Where you let one guy cut and then the other guy picks? So I let him cut and he did it way off to one side so there was a real big piece and a real little piece and then he just sort of looked at me and I knew I better take the little piece or there really would be trouble.”
“So he got the big piece? Then what?” asked Dad.
“Like I said, I had other stuff so it was OK. Well, not OK but not so bad; and anyway right about then Miss Bongaro came in and sat at our table and she started talking with all the kids so Farlini got all nice the way he does when there’s a teacher around. So there wasn’t any trouble.”
“So where does Miss Barstow come in?”
“Well, later, in class, Miss Barstow asked how to divide three apples for two guys.” He drew three circles on the table with his finger. “And then I remembered Billy Farlini in the lunchroom and how cut and share didn’t work and I thought, well, the problem there was that there were two guys and one cut. But if each guy got a cut and then they took turns choosing then it would be fair. You know, like if Farlini cut first and then I got to cut where I want and then he chose a piece and then I chose and like that. So I was thinking of that and I thought that’s what she meant when she said ‘fairly.’ And then I thought, well, if there’s three apples and two guys and each guy gets one cut, then that doesn’t work ’cause there’s an apple left over. And if each guy gets two cuts that could work except the pieces are always different sizes and you don’t know if the apples are the same. But if each guy gets three cuts and it’s two cuts on each apple then that should work out fair. I think.”
By this time, Jim was sitting at the other end of the table doodling his own set of circles and slashes with his finger. Dad stood staring at Billy’s side of the table, visualizing the boy’s method.
“That’s pretty sharp, Mister Bill,” said Jim.
“It sure is. That’s a clever solution, Billy,” said Dad. “So where’s the note come in?”
“Well, Miss Barstow said it was wrong. She said you just cut one apple in half and give each guy a whole apple and a half apple. But I still don’t get it. It’s not ‘fairly.’ ”
Jim laughed. “That’s just what I ordered; it’s not what I want.” he said. Then Dad laughed too.
“Huh?” said Billy.
“It’s OK, Mister Bill. It’s a saying at my company. When somebody wants a special program or a special computer they usually go to a lot of trouble telling us exactly how they want it to work. If we give them exactly what they order, then a lot of the time they come back and tell us it’s not the right thing. If we want to get it right the first time, we have to figure out what people mean, not what they say. Computers are easy. People are hard.”
“But Billy, that still doesn’t explain the note,” said Dad.
“Yeah. See, I didn’t give my answer quick enough, I guess, so maybe it sounded funny or something and then Billy Farlini made a fart noise and everybody laughed. Miss Barstow thought it was my fault, I guess, so that’s why she sent the note.”
“Ah,” said Dad, and turned back to the food.
After dinner, the three went back to the front room. Dad looked at his watch and said, “I should go see if that message arrived,” and went up the stairs. Billy went straight to the box on the table.
“Can I touch it?” he asked Jim.
Jim sat on the floor next to the table. “Sure,” he said. “Better than that, you get to keep it for a while if you want. I was talking with Dad about it before you came home and we agreed that you’re the best man for the next part of this project.”
“Neat!” said Billy and grabbed the box. He sat down on the floor, facing his brother, and turned the box over in his hands. “What do I have to do?”
Jim smiled, “I’ll get to that.” He leaned over and started pointing to features on the box. “Here, I’ll show you how it works. This thing is a status light, this lens is the eye, and these two little grilles up here on the corners are microphones. This grille down here is a speaker.” He sat back. “If you’re in your own room or office, you just set it on the desk or on a shelf somewhere where it can see and hear you. After a while it’s supposed to learn enough about you so that it can help out.”
Jim pulled a small zippered pouch from under the table and opened it. He took out a small flat box with two plugs sticking out the back, a thing that looked like a small hearing aid, and a pair of matte lapel pins with oversize studs. They all had the same handmade look as the box.
“Now these are for when you go out. You plug this in here,” he fit the smaller box across the bottom of the larger one, covering two of the four jacks. “The speaker and microphones turn off and you use these instead. That way it doesn’t bother anybody. Put this in your ear and these two pins are the microphones. Just pin them on your lapels or on your shirt or something and the box can still hear even if it’s in a drawer or your briefcase or somewhere.