Shauna was waiting for us when the plane landed. Jake and Mark continued on with the plane and Edna and I were driven to Hannah’s Home. I stayed long enough to make sure that Edna was well taken care of and I headed home. It was good to be back and mom, dad, and I shared a late dinner, while I told them all about the mine cave-in and the rescue. Dad was most interested in my thoughts about L4 and beyond. Mom was more interested in Edna and her granddaughter Ana and she was looking forward to meeting her tomorrow.
The next morning, Mom and I drove out to Hannah’s Home together. I left mom to get acquainted with Edna while I went to work out with Uncle Paul and Sifu Zhang. My daily hospital rounds usually caused me to miss their morning training sessions, and it felt good to be back training just the three of us. Sifu Zhang was happy with my progress overall and scheduled my red-belt test for right after Christmas. Since my only plans for the holidays were to work with Sister Clara, that suited me fine. Uncle Paul had plans to go away, but he wouldn’t leave until three days after Christmas, so he was good with the date too.
As was usually the case these days, we ran through the forms and then the two of them took turns beating up on me. I’d continued my usual practice of not using my field at all, until I couldn’t continue fighting without it. Only then would I wrap them in a field to get an advantage. I was very proud of the fact that it took both Uncle Paul and Sifu Zhang a lot longer to get me to the point of needing to use my field that it did on that day, over a year ago, when Sifu Zhang had staggered into Uncle Paul’s studio and watched Paul spar with me. Since I was now scheduled for my red-belt test, I guess that fact hadn’t been lost on them either.
After a shower and change I ducked into VR Health Services for a meeting with Gary, Mia and Jenny. We talked about the progress that was being made and I told them about Harry agreeing to let us beta test at the Thomas Hendrick School of Medicine and the Galt University Hospital. They were thrilled at the news and immediately started making a list of features that had to be finalized before we could have medical students and residents trying out our program.
The chance to beta test at Galt reminded me of the time that I’d tested out my fake scanner at Sister Clara’s and how that doctor at the hospital had been so rude to her. I told the team about the story and suggested that we add a score for ‘behavior’ to the program. Students that were rude to the VR nurses would lose points. Likewise, a doctor with a poor beside manner could be penalized as well. The team all agreed that if there was a chance that the system could lessen the arrogant behavior of some doctors, then it was worth incorporating into the program.
At the end of the meeting, I made one final suggestion. Even though we still had a long way to go with the surgery part of our program, I wanted some time set aside to begin on the clinical interactions side of the program. To that end, I proposed that our researchers and designers spend time with Sister Clara going over the most common ailments that patients come in with at her clinic and to see if she’d let them observe some of the interactions and treatments.
I left VR headquarters and went to my office in the administration building. I spent over an hour researching and listing out which books I wanted Gerry to print for me next. For the last three months, I’d focused mainly on medical books, textbooks, and transcriptions of lectures. Gerry had also taken the initiative of finding transcripts and videos describing new surgical techniques from medical conferences around the world. This time though, I wanted to branch out a bit. First, I asked for helicopter flight school textbooks and testing material. To this, I added books on helicopter maintenance and types of helicopters.
Next, I added languages. Russian, Portuguese, Chinese and Yiddish would be languages five, six, seven and eight. I’d have no time to watch movies and work on my pronunciation and accent, but at least I’d be able to somewhat understand them and read articles in those languages. I would have the chance to practice Chinese with Sifu Zhang and Yiddish with my grandparents.
For awhile now, I had the idea that I should use my last half hour of my time volunteering at the hospital to read to the kids. I kept picturing reading Harry Potter to them from memory while I scanned their cancers and shifted away tiny portions of the cancer, thereby weakening it sufficiently for their chemotherapy and drugs to take effect. I’d been using this incremental cancer reducing technique for the past several months exclusively on those children whose cancer wasn’t responding to treatment and it was working very well. The kids were slowly getting better and no one was getting suspicious. The best part was that this would barely show up on scans, unlike a full cancer removal would, and what did show up would be attributed to the drugs working as intended. I figured that it was time to step up the program a little and use it on all the kids during reading sessions. Of course, the Harry Potter series made the list, as did Holes by Louis Sachar, a few Gordon Corman books, Matilda, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The Lighting Thief, and Ender’s Game. Sadly, The Princess Bride did not make the list, because unlike most books, the movie was much better.
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I finished up the list for Gerry with books on horticulture, herbal medicines from around the world, everyday pharmacology, virtual reality programming and design, virtual reality limitations, university level geology courses and the associated lectures and mining techniques. I wrapped up the list and sent it off to Gerry along with a request for a recommendation of which metallic ink printer would be best for the office and which portable one would be best, adding that both needed to be able to accept his ink cartridges. So as not to possibly offend him, I explained that I wanted my staff to print out summaries of their updates for me to read. This was entirely true. I realized that I was spending way too much time reading progress reports every week and that it was only getting worse. By printing those reports on metallic ink printers, I could slash the amount of time I was spending getting updates and I would remember what I’d read for more that five minutes. It would also be handy to be able to print out my own notes, thoughts and observations, key web pages and emails.
Shauna was busy on the phone when I finished up my messages to Gerry, so I took the opportunity to give Howie a call and get some news about my off-grid investments. In a nutshell, Gerry’s printing company was still growing, the mechanic had built out his shop and was slowly building his business, the homeschooling school opened in time for the school year with eighteen students and five teachers, the whiskey distillery was still setting up, and the hand-filled ammunition business was already taking orders from over a dozen gun clubs and was planning on hiring on an additional person. Besides that, Howie had been able to sell off more of the gemstones that I’d given him and my ‘undeclared’ account was now brimming with more funds that were ready to be invested.
“Howie, I can see that this is only going to get more complicated. I can’t see you having the time to keep up with all my business interests and take care of your own businesses. Do you know anyone that I can hire to manage all this for me? Someone that you trust to do a good job and not steal from me?”
“I’m glad you asked that, Abby. I happen to have someone in mind. Two someones actually. My kids, Scott and Jordan. If you’re ok with keeping it all in the family, that is.”
“I have no issues with that. I’ve worked with my father many times. I didn’t figure you for an engineer though, Howie.”
“Oh, I’m not. My wife is. Big Star Trek fan. She chose the names. Names sounded ok to me so I didn’t argue. At least she didn’t name them Spock or Guinan. Scott’s seventeen and Jordan is fifteen. I figured that Scott could be in charge of finding new investment opportunities, while Jordan took care of the books and followed up with your existing business, making sure they’re treating you right and didn’t forget to give you your due. She has a head for numbers like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Don’t you want them to work with you and learn the family business, take over for you one day?”
“You may not have noticed, but I’m not the easiest person to get along with. It’s probably better for them if they don’t spend all day with me. I’ll supervise them and make sure they don’t make stupid rookie mistakes, but they’ll only get me in small doses. Hopefully, this way, they get experience and they won’t grow to hate their old man.”
“You’re a wise man, Howie.”
“You don’t have issues with them being so young?”
“How old was I when I first met you? It would be hypocritical of me to object to them based on their ages. As long as they can do the work well, I’m good. Speaking of work, in all your research on simulators, did you run across any other interesting VR companies that needed saving? The more I see of VR, the more uses I can think of for it. I’d like to hire on at least ten more people to the team and branch out into a few new projects.”
“I found a lot of them. Very few were in the medical field.”
“That ok. Matt and Mia weren’t in the medical field either. I’m hoping to add in expertise in weapons, explosives and ballistics, education, flight training, AI and VR equipment. Matt’s very good with designing equipment for VR rigs, but he’s going to need help for what I have in mind.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Anything else, before I go break the good news to the kids?”
“Yes. Can you get me a helicopter?”