by D G Hervey
“Jon, you spoke of office workers competing, trying to ‘better the performance’ of another’s plane.” Haley asked, “What sort of competition do you envision for us?”
“Hmm. I can envision several competitions,” replied Jon. “Easily, one is the plane that goes the farthest from launch to touchdown. Another could be the plane that remains aloft the longest. For that I suggest having the pod’s bot do the timing. A third way in which there can be interesting vying would again use our bot to judge which plane achieves the straightest flight of more than five meters from launch to touchdown. Another contest I’ll suggest is, which is the prettiest airplane? with Marie as the judge. Finally, I recommend myself as the judge for the plane with the most innovative use of materials.”
“So I take it that neither you nor Marie expect to enter the competition?” interjected Ykon.
“I guess that Marie could enter all of the competitions excepting the one she’ll judge,” replied Jon. “As for me, I feel that I might have an unfair advantage what with all of the paper airplanes I have made and seen made, so I won’t compete.”
“Okay,” Niki remarked, “I’m up for this competition. Can we have more than one plane to enter into the different competitions?
“I like that idea,” responded Marie.
Haley asked, “How much time do I have to get ready for this event?”
Jon responded, “How about tomorrow evening, here in our common room at this same time?”
-
The next evening all of the pod’s members and its bot were assembled in their common room. Marie did not choose to enter any contest.
Marie suggested, “In case someone intends to enter their prettiest plane in other competitions, I think that competition should be held first. That way the beauty can be assessed before any crash impairs a plane’s looks. Also, I won’t know who goes with which entry; I’ll turn my back while each of you places your beautiful plane on the table.”
“But you’ll know which one is mine anyway,” remarked Niki. “I did not try to disguise the fact that I made my plane.”
So Marie turned her back and each of the six young women placed a plane she had made on the large table of the common room.
Haley’s plane was made of silk with copper wires helping it to hold its shape. For the beauty contest, she’d selected some colorful red and gold striped silk fabric with the stripes running along the length of the plane.
Turning around and looking at it first Marie commented, “I don’t know who made this one. The colorful stripes streamline it nicely.”
Fawn’s plane was of starched white cotton, colored with crayons in traditional Hopi pottery designs.
“This one puts me in mind of the native American people,” stated Marie. “That narrows the maker down to two of you. But I’m not sure which. I always admire these designs. I once made a set of place mats using cloth with a similar design which Jon had selected.”
Ykon’s plane was of cotton fabric from Marie’s stash, a cloth with small lions on it. She’d fussy-cut the fabric so a forward-facing lion was centered on each wing. Her fabric was held together with glue that also covered the underside of the wings, which rendered them impervious to air. She used a bit of steel wire in an attempt to achieve a proper balance for flying.
When Marie, scanning the ‘paper’ airplanes, saw Ykon’s she observed, “Nicely centered lions on each wing. This is impressive construction. I hope you have another plane for the flying competitions. This one seems to have heavy wings. Perhaps the amount of glue weighs it down.” She asked rhetorically, “Now who in our group is partial to lions, I wonder?”
Ykon snickered at that comment. She was surprised by Marie’s observation. She did have another plane as her flying entry.
Niki’s plane was of painted white linen. She painted the Russian flag on the top of each wing, using oil based paint to seal the cloth.
Marie viewed the plane and remarked, “Yes, Niki, I cannot believe that anyone else would paint the Russian flag on their airplane. It is nicely aligned and colorful.”
Azek’s plane was of white flax, titanium wire, and water based paint. Using her paints, she made Aztec designs on its wings, then they were coated with olive oil.
Marie lifted up Azek’s plane. She put it under her nose and observed, “This one would win the good smelling contest if there were one. I like the smell of olive oil better than the odor of glue or oil based paint. It is similar to the other native-American themed plane. They’ll be hard to pick between if they are the top two.”
Tameena’s plane was made of aluminum foil with some burned-on flour and canola oil. The burned-on flour on each of the plane’s wings formed the mask of a slow loris’ face and ears.
“Wow!” exclaimed Marie. “This is not an easy competition to judge. They are all so beautiful. The red and gold one is sleek, streamlined. The Russian flag on this one is nicely done. Two have beautiful designs which remind me of pottery of the Americas. The last one is totally different. I see a face, but I do not know what the face might represent. Somehow, despite its lack of color, it seems nuanced and delicate. I will judge it to be the prettiest.”
Smiling, Tami informed, “The face is of a slow loris.”
“I never heard of a slow loris,” responded Marie. “I don’t know what one is. Since you know, this must be your plane. ”
Now beaming, Tami responded, “Thanks! That may be the only part of this contest I’ll win. My planes don’t seem to fly very well. I’m not sure any of them will go five meters in the air.”
Then the flying of the planes began.
Jon remarked, “I guess it is most important for our bot to be where the entire flight of the planes is in its view. Let the contestants launch their entries from behind the line on the floor, a step away from the wall. Will our bot position itself on the side where none of the planes should hit it? Do any of you have different planes for the distance, duration, and straightness contests?”
“I’ve got different planes for each flight contest,” replied Haley.
“Me, too!” chimed Niki and Fawn together.
“Get your distance planes ready,” announced Jon. “We’ll have that event first. Do you want to all go at the same time or do you prefer separate launchings?”
“I’m concerned that my plane might hit someone else’s in midair,” responded Niki, “so I want to fly mine alone.”
“I’ll fly mine with any others who want to go as a group,” volunteered Fawn.
Azek asked, “Is the contest for the plane that goes the farthest from the launch line or the one that travels the greatest distance in a curved path?”
“The first way would be the easiest for us all to judge unless the planes skidded much upon touchdown,” answered Jon. “But with our bot here, it should not matter. So let’s vote. All who want the farthest from the launch line raise your hand?”
No one raised her hand.
“So I take it that you all have planes which you lack confidence that you can fly straight,” responded Jon. “So be it. Now, the group which intends to launch simultaneously, please step up to the launch line.”
Everyone but Niki got her plane and toed the line.
“Ready, set, go!” exclaimed Jon.
The five women all launched their planes, sort of simultaneously. When they all touched down, the bot announced, “Of those, Ykon’s went the farthest, six point five three meters.”
Ykon shook her head and said, “I did better in practice, but let’s see you best that distance, Niki.”
Niki stepped to the launch line. She held her plane high above her head, launched it at the highest point she could reach.
The bot said, “Niki’s plane went eight point one one meters.”
Ykon said, “You outsmarted us with your unique launch method. That was clever. Good for you.”
“Thank you,” replied Niki.
“What outstanding sportsmanship,” remarked Marie.
“Next
up is the flight duration contest,” announced Jon.
All six of the young women selected a plane and went to the launch line.
“Let’s have each launch separately to ease the problem for our august judge and time keeper,” suggested Jon. “Niki, since you already have won a flight competition, l think you should go first to set the mark for the others to try to best. Then Tami, having won the beautiful plane competition should go second.”
No one objected. Niki used her high elevation launch method. The bot announced, “six point five six seconds.”
As prognosticated Tami’s plane hardly flew. It plummeted to the floor in just over two seconds. Tami just shrugged her shoulders.
Haley used Niki’s launch method. Her light weight plane stayed aloft the longest, some eight point six nine seconds.
“Thanks, Niki, for the launch method,” responded Haley. That flight was by far the best I’ve been able to achieve.”
“Imitation is the highest form of flattery, so I’ve heard,” stated Niki. “So I’m flattered and you are welcome.”
No one bested Haley’s time aloft.
“Now let’s have the straightness flight competition,” suggested Jon.
Azek remarked, “Fawn needs a different plane if she’s going to have one go straight. So far hers has shown a big in-flight bend to the left.”
Fawn promptly went to her quarters and emerged with a plane of a completely different look. She commented, “This is the one I made to fly straight.”
“It looks like a winner to me,” observed Ykon. “Good luck. But mine will also do pretty well, I believe.”
“One at a time,” reminded Jon.
Tami launched her plane first. “As expected, I didn’t get mine to go the necessary distance,” she lamented. “I guess it is just too heavy.”
“And the nose crinkled up when it crash-landed,” observed Niki giggling. “It must be too heavy up front. Were you trying to imitate Ykon’s buxom figure with your design?”
Everyone laughed at that comment.
Ykon responded, “Your boobs will get bigger too when you are about to deliver, Niki.”
“It’s nice that you were able to giggle as well,” remarked Marie.
Only two of the ‘paper’ airplanes went very straight for the required distance, Fawn’s and Ykon’s.
The bot stated, “Fawn’s plane flew the straightest, exceeding the five meter distance.”
That left Jon to judge which made the most innovative use of materials.
“You’ve all been innovative in achieving some degree of flight of your pseudo-paper airplanes. I am surprised by the range of concepts you’ve pursued. There are two which exceed the others by a bit, the planes made by Ykon and Azek. So I judge this to be a tie.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Marie. “Now I want to learn, what is a slow loris?”
“They are nocturnal, mostly arboreal, slow-breeding primates from my part of the world,” responded Tami. “They move slowly and when threatened, they freeze. They have a toxic bite which is rare among mammals. But I chose to use them because I think they are cute.”
“Your portrayal of them certainly looks cute,” responded Marie.
“Since I did not have to construct a plane, I’ve had time to finish sewing awards to give to the winners,” Marie announced. These awards are called Mug Rugs which are a sort of fabric coaster. Each one is embroidered with the date and the competition category. Fortunately, everyone gets one. Isn’t that nice. I’ll still have to embroider the category on the extra innovation winner, but I have Mug Rugs for each of you.”
-
As they entered their quarters Marie remarked to Jon, “That was a nice diversion.”
He replied, “I thought changing the focus could ease the tension caused by recent events. Having a bit of fun seems to have improved all of our moods.”
“You used to do that as a young lad riding in a car with your parents, as I recall what you’ve told me,” commented Marie.
“Yes, when things in the car got tense, I sometimes just started laughing out loud when nothing funny had occurred,” Jon remembered. “That always seemed to cause my parents to put aside whatever had been their source of friction.”
“And here this evening, everyone got one of my awards,” stated Marie.
“That was by design,” confessed Jon. “Unfortunately, I could think of only five ways to hold competitions and we have six young women as pod-mates. Then you quite rationally suggested that you judge the prettiest plane first. That caused me to push to judge the innovative use of materials last. Then, if the winners of the other competitions had all different winners, I could call my judging to be a tie so everyone would be a winner and get one of the mug rugs I saw you collect before we went to the common room this evening. How thoughtful it was of you to make them.”
“Thoughtful of you, too,” responded Marie. “They really are all winners.”
Chapter 2 - Government and Business
As Calypso was recovering from the damage done by the CME and Jupiter’s radiation, a feeling of normalcy returned to the citizens.
Before fixing their supper one evening, Marie was thinking about the work they intended to accomplish. They had already received a number of proposals from entrepreneurial hopefuls. Marie paused from her preparations to meet with the proposers. She felt the necessity of being sure Jon would take her need for security into account.
“Jon,” Marie urged, “before we commit to investing in any of these start-up enterprises, we really should decide what fraction of our wealth we will keep in reserve or else we may be tempted to over commit.”
“Actually,” Jon remarked, “I’ve thought about this already. I suggest that our reserve should be at least one-quarter of what we have, but not over one-third of our holdings.”
Marie responded, “Then I opt for our reserve to be the one-third. If our available funds do keep increasing, we can always offer to help some of the proposers in a week or a month or whatever time interval passes that allows our reserve to grow enough.”
Jon nodded his agreement. He remembered Marie often said ‘women marry for security’ and he understood their reserve now constituted her security. When they left Earth they left behind the financial safety net of owning acreage with a house on it in Texas near Crockett.
-
After their supper Marie commented to Jon, “We have received a variety of interesting proposals for businesses here on Calypso. I’ve skimmed their executive summaries to understand what we have to consider so we can prioritize which ones to delve into initially. Perhaps we should first look in detail at ones that are similar on the surface, but may really not be in significant competition with each other. I have two pairs of such in mind.
“There is a proposal for a foundry and another for a machine shop, but they may be different enough that they constitute virtually unique businesses, even though there is some overlap.
“There are two chicken operations proposals. One looks to be primarily for meat and the other for eggs. Which one or ones do you think we should tackle tomorrow?”
“I have no basis to make a choice,” Jon replied. “All four of the ones you mentioned are essential to the development and success of Calypso. We should be able to tackle two in a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Whichever two we undertake tomorrow; the other two should be the subject of day-after-tomorrow’s consideration. Why not just take them in the order you mentioned them. So, both groups be alerted by your Parrots. The foundry and machine shop proposals are up tomorrow and the day after will be for the chicken proposals. See if you can schedule yourselves, one for our morning, say 10:30 AM, and the other for the afternoon, say 3:30 PM. If you cannot agree on who goes first, then let us know this evening and we will specify. If you do agree, let us know who is first each day so we know which proposal to study first. Of course my suggestion leaves time for the proposing chef, Djang, who is to provide lunch for our pod at noon. So, if you expect to
be quite long, you might prefer the afternoon session that does not have a fixed time by which we must be finished. If any of you desire to do a presentation, instead of just having a meeting, we will accept that.”
Marie thought, Jon has just employed the way ML communicated with the citizens, via Parrot, just as I did earlier. Good for him. It makes it much easier to communicate with the proposers.
-
Jon and Marie were promptly informed by the pod’s bot that the morning meeting would be for the foundry proposal and it would be a presentation. They studied that proposal and the one for the first chef, Djang.
-
Promptly at 10:30 AM the industrial engineer, Nzos, of Subtle, who had worked at Calypso for three years, arrived to do the foundry, metal rolling, forging, piercing, and extrusion presentation herself. She showed Jon and Marie pictures of a lot of Calypso they had not seen so far. There was an impressive amount of equipment to do heavy work and it was all operable by bots, many bots.
What Nzos proposed financially seemed sound, and her firm could use an infusion of some of Jon’s and Marie’s funds. She intended to take over almost half of Calypso’s equipment for ferrous metal working, including its machining, welding, wire manufacture, and cable laying. Her proposal was for a vertically integrated operation.
Nzos’s show was impressive, but it showed there was a history of Calypso’s manufactured components not initially meeting their specifications, and having to be reworked. The frequency of this was of concern to Jon, a retired engineer. The failures to satisfy specifications were attributed to a variety of possible causes, such as inclusions, dislocations, impurities, non-uniform temperatures, and inadequate annealing.
Jon felt that Nzos really needed engineering input. For example, the historical failure rate aboard Calypso for pierced and then extruded components was higher than Jon expected. Jon was surprised that the bots had not remedied the problem. Perhaps the failure rate was due to the processes being somewhat an art and not just a science, or it might be a result of some operations being performed at other than one G. Perhaps the failure rate had been acceptable to ML’s managers. But he thought that what Nzos needed most was not within the range of his expertise; her firm needed someone with metallurgy experience and perhaps an expert in quality control.