"Heh. No, these look more like ... graduate students."
The loud one had red hair snatched back in a pony tail. He gave Dixie Mae a broad grin. "We’ve got a couple of extra display flats. Grab some seating." He jerked a thumb toward the wall and a stack of folding chairs. "With you two, we may actually be able to finish today!"
Dixie Mae looked uncertainly at the display and keyboard that he had just lit up. "But what–"
"Cognitive Science 301. The final exam. A hundred dollars a question, but we have 107 bluebooks to grade, and Gerry asked mainly essay questions."
Victor laughed. "You’re getting a hundred dollars for each bluebook?"
"For each question in each bluebook, man. But don’t tell. I think Gerry is funding this out of money that LotsaTech thinks he’s spending on research." He waved at the nearly empty room, in this nearly completed building.
Dixie Mae leaned down to look at the display, the white letters on a blue background. It was a standard bluebook, just like at Valley Community College. Only here the questions were complete nonsense, such as:
7. Compare and contrast cognitive dissonance in operant conditioning with Minsky-Loeve attention maintenance. Outline an algorithm for constructing the associated isomorphism.
"So," said Dixie Mae, "what’s cognitive science?"
The grin disappeared from the other’s face. "Oh, Christ. You’re not here to help with the grading?"
Dixie Mae shook her head. Victor said, "It shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve had some grad courses in psych."
The redhead did not look encouraged. "Does anyone know this guy?"
"I do," said a girl at the far end of all the tables. "That’s Victor Smaley. He’s a journalism grad, and not very good at that."
Victor looked across the tables. "Hey, Mouse! How ya doing?"
The redhead looked beseechingly at the ceiling. "I do not need these distractions!" His gaze came down to the visitors. "Will you two just please go away?"
"No way," said Dixie Mae. "I came here for a reason. Someone–probably someone here in Building
0999–is messing with our work in Customer Support. I’m going to find out who." And give them some free dental work.
"Look. If we don’t finish grading the exam today, Gerry Reich’s going to make us come back tomorrow and–"
"I don’t think that’s true, Graham," said a guy sitting across the table. "Prof. Reich’s whole point was that we should not feel time pressure. This is an experiment, comparing time-bounded grading with complete individualization."
"Yes!" said Graham the redhead. "That’s exactly why Reich would lie about it. ‘Take it easy, make good money,’ he says. But I’ll bet that if we don’t finish today, he’ll screw us into losing the weekend."
He glared at Dixie Mae. She glared back. Graham was going to find out just what stubborn and willful really meant. There was a moment of silence and then–
"I’ll talk to them, Graham." It was the woman at the far end of the tables.
"Argh. Okay, but not here!"
"Sure, we’ll go out on the porch." She beckoned Dixie Mae and Victor to follow her out the side door.
"And hey," called Graham as they walked out, "don’t take all day, Ellen. We need you here."
The porch on 0999 had a bigger junk-food machine than back at Customer Support. Dixie Mae didn’t think that made up for no cafeteria, but Ellen Garcia didn’t seem to mind. "We’re only going to be here this one day. I’m not coming back on Saturday."
Dixie Mae bought herself a sandwich and soda and they all sat down on some beat-up lawn furniture.
"So what do you want to know?" said Ellen.
"See, Mouse, we’re following up on the weirdest–"
Ellen waved Victor silent, her expression pretty much the same as all Victor’s female acquaintances. She looked expectantly at Dixie Mae.
"Well, my name is Dixie Mae Leigh. This morning we got this email at our customer support address.
It looks like a fake. And there are things about it that–" she handed over the hard copy.
Ellen’s gaze scanned down. "Kind of fishy dates," she said to herself. Then she stopped, seeing the "To:" header. She glanced up at Dixie Mae. "Yeah, this is abuse. I used to see this kind of thing when I was a Teaching Assistant. Some guy would start hitting on a girl in my class." She eyed Victor speculatively.
"Why does everybody suspect me?" he said.
"You should be proud, Victor. You have such a reliable reputation." She shrugged. "But actually, this isn’t quite your style." She read on. "The rest is smirky lascivious, but otherwise it doesn’t mean anything to me."
"It means a lot to me," said Dixie Mae. "This guy is talking about things that nobody should know."
"Oh?" She went back to the beginning and stared at the printout some more. "I don’t know about secrets in the message body, but one of my hobbies is rfc9822 headers. You’re right that this is all scammed up. The message number and ident strings are too long; I think they may carry added content."
She handed back the email. "There’s not much more I can tell you. If you want to give me a copy, I could crunch on those header strings over the weekend."
"Oh... . Okay, thanks." It was more solid help than anyone had offered so far, but–"Look Ellen, the main thing I was hoping for was some clues here in Building 0999. The letter pointed me here.
I run into ... abusers sometimes, myself. I don’t let them get away with it! I’d bet money that whoever this is, he’s one of those graders." And he’s probably laughing at us right now.
Ellen thought a second and then shook her head. "I’m sorry, Dixie Mae. I know these people pretty well. Some of them are a little strange, but they’re not bent like this. Besides, we didn’t know we’d be here till yesterday afternoon. And today we haven’t had time for mischief."
"Okay," Dixie Mae forced a smile. "I appreciate your help." She would give Ellen a copy of the letter and go back to Customer Support, just slightly better off than if she had behaved sensibly in the first place.
Dixie Mae started to get up, but Victor leaned forward and set his notepad on the table between them. "That email had to come from somewhere. Has anyone here been acting strange, Mousy?"
Ellen glared at him, and after a second he said, "I mean ‘Ellen.’ You know I’m just trying to help out Dixie Mae here. Oh yeah, and maybe get a good story for the Bruin."
Ellen shrugged. "Graham told you; we’re grading on the side for Gerry Reich."
"Huh." Victor leaned back. "Ever since I’ve been at UCLA, Reich has had a reputation for being an operator. He’s got big government contracts and all this consulting at LotsaTech. He tries to come across as a one-man supergenius, but actually it’s just money, um, buying lots and lots of peons.
So what do you think he’s up to?"
Ellen shrugged. "Technically, I bet Gerry is misusing his contacts with LotsaTech. But I doubt if they care; they really like him." She brightened. "And I approve of what Prof. Reich is doing with this grading project. When I was a TA, I wished there was some way that I could make a day-long project out of reading each student’s exam. That was an impossible wish; there was just never enough time. But with his contacts here at LotsaTech, Gerry Reich has come close to doing it. He’s paying some pretty sharp grad students very good money to grade and comment on every single essay question. Time is no object, he’s telling us. The students in these classes are going to get really great feedback."
"This guy Reich keeps popping up," said Dixie Mae. "He was behind the testing program that selected Victor and me and the others for customer support."
"Well, Victor’s right about him. Reich is a manipulator. I know he’s been running tests all this week. He grabbed all of Olson Hall for the operation. We didn’t know what it was for until afterwards. He nailed Graham and the rest of our gang for this one-day grading job. It looks like he has all sorts of projects."
"Yeah, we took our tests at Olson Hall, too." There had been a small up-front payment, and hints of job prospects... . And Dixie Mae had ended up with maybe the best job offer she’d ever had.