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sisters?) Nod appreciatively from time to time.
You re rusty, Brent told himself. And: It s first-date jitters.
The rotation came back to Brent. Time for a personal anecdote, he
decided.  My mom is the office manager at a furniture store. Dad works
for an office-supply distributor. Imagine the double-entendre opportu-
nities with desk drawers and accessories. Their banter went from enig-
matic to icky, bypassing cute, when I was maybe twelve.
 Well, Megan said, grinning,  the double entendre is a staple of
comedy.
Megan was smart and funny and attractive. She was outgoing with-
out quite crossing the line to flaming extrovert. They had things in
common, with none of the baggage of working together or even within
the same field. He wanted this to work, and not only because it had
been well, he couldn t remember how long, but since before Angle-
ton, since his last date. His eyeballs must be getting cloudy.
So, why did this require such an effort?
What the hell was wrong with him?
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friday, june 24, 2016
Kim whistled tunelessly to herself. Sometime in the past week her hair
had crossed the divide from medium shag to medium shaggy. Tonight
it defied all attempts to make it behave. In frustration, she extended
her lower lip and puffed out her bangs. They fell back, flat and lifeless,
as soon as she stopped blowing.
Fortunately, Nick was running late. Maybe she could still pull her-
self together.
She started in on her makeup, trying to look past the summer sprin-
kle of freckles across her nose. Rosy complexion. Classic, oval face.
Dark eyebrows grown too thick yet again, and no time for plucking.
Clear hazel eyes those she liked. Nice features, in the proper number
and places, although had anyone asked, she would have foregone the
Dumbo ears. Hair a pleasant light brown, always kept long enough to
cover those ears.
The condo buzzer sounded as she was zipping her little black dress.
The dress was new thank the gods for e-tailers, virtual fittings, and a
condo office manager to accept parcels. Too bad an avatar could not
take her place at the stylist. She had rescheduled and canceled three
times in two weeks. She slipped on black, strappy heels and buzzed
Nick into the building.
 Wow, he said. He was wearing his charcoal gray Armani, her fa-
vorite among his suits.
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SMALL MI RACLES
 The designer thanks you. Truthfully, the dress did look good on
her.  Ten spare pounds well hidden.
 Nonsense. He put his arms around Kim s waist and kissed her.
 Lose the dress, and I ll admire what s underneath.
A good answer and a tempting suggestion. Nick had been stuck in
Albany, and she here in Utica, for three weeks running.  Dinner first,
fella.
 I ll call for a pizza. At this hour on a Friday night, we ll have plenty
of time. He winked.  Then after, well oiled in pizza grease . . .
She took Nick s elbow.  Out. A proper meal. Then we ll see. And do.
She had made reservations at the trendy new place in town. Italian,
of course. With a glass of Chianti in her, she finally began to unwind.
She had had a hell of a week. Canceled salon appointments had been
the least of her problems.  How was your drive?
 Uninteresting. He leaned over the table.  Ad copy is ad copy, of in-
terest only to the client. My folks and my brother are fine. The dogs are
rambunctious. Nice weather we re having. Let s check out the menus.
 Want to make this quick, do you? She couldn t help chuckling.
 Sorry, I happen to need a night out.
Nick topped off their glasses, then signaled the waiter for a second
bottle.  That power-management software still kicking your butt?
She clinked glasses. Nick no more understood programming than
he could levitate. He was a dear to ask and, by God, she needed to
vent.  Yes and no.
The bug she had hunted for more than two months turned out to
be a hardware design flaw. To fix the problem the right way would be
grossly expensive. Worse, Engineering could not possibly redo the hard-
ware design, revalidate it, retune the manufacturing process, and prove
to the FDA the new nanobots were safe without blowing big-time the
schedule for the upcoming field trial. With the Army finally interested,
schedule was to be protected above all else. The powers that be had
spoken: the programmers had to work around the hardware problem.
It was always the way.
 Hon? Are you okay?
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EDWARD M. LERNER
She had promised herself she wouldn t run on and on about work.
Well, the weekend was young. Best to exorcise these demons now.
 The bot glitches had nothing to do with our new software.
Nor the operating system. Nor any of the programming tools. She
had assigned half her staff to reverse-engineering the third-party prod-
ucts used to compile and load code into the nanobots. In desperation,
she had even hacked into a vendor s private bug database, when their
Tech Support desk had been less than forthcoming. Still nothing.
She said,  The onboard program keeps growing. It turns out the
fault lies simply with where the program loads. Luck of the draw, the
latest update to the bot power-management software expanded into
a previously unused portion of the memory physically near the out-
side.
 Huh, Nick managed.  Is that the no part, or the yes?
He had the decency never to dwell on the minutiae of web advertis-
ing. Kim said, smiling,  It s the no. Our software was never the prob-
lem. The yes part is that software will have to work around the real
problem.
Allocate more of the memory to error-correcting codes. It meant
less useful capacity, because more bits would be expended in redun-
dant storage, but at least then they could rely again on the content of
the memory. It meant rewriting core operating-system functions. Sigh.
On the bright side, the existing bot inventory would be saved. With
molecular memory, updating software was just chemistry. Program [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]