by Stasia Black
“And coffee,” I add as I reach for the dials on his radio. “Please tell me we’re getting coffee somewhere along the way.”
My hand pauses in front of the dash, where I would normally expect dials and buttons. But fuck, rich people. There’s a freaking little flatscreen instead. Because of course.
A little logo in the upper right announces it’s satellite radio. Little round images of buttons light up at my touch that I presume are presets. I press number one and screaming metal music rips through the air, assaulting us from all sides at earsplitting volume.
The car jerks slightly in the lane and I swat at the screen trying to make it stop. “Oh my God!” I yell, finally giving up and slamming my hands over my ears.
Jackson rolls his finger in a counterclockwise motion on a circle in the bottom lefthand corner of the screen and the volume goes down. I’m still hesitant when I pull one hand away from my ear, like it’s a trick and the eardrum-bursting noise is liable to come back any second. But no, it’s all clear.
“Who has hardcore metal as their number one car preset?” I swat Jackson on the shoulder.
He shrugs, his face neutral. “It’s good stress relief after a hard day at work.”
I can only stare at him like he’s crazy. “Are you fucking kidding me? That music makes me want to go stab somebody, not feel calm.”
He laughs at this.
“All right, crazy.” I give him the side-eye. “Let’s see what’s behind door number two.” I push the little number two preset and brace myself. At first I can barely hear anything, he’s set the volume dial so low. Cautiously, I spin the digital dial so it’s loud enough for me to hear the music.
Alanis Morissette crooning about irony fills the car. Now I’m the one laughing when I look over at him.
“Seriously? You go from metal to nineties pop music?”
One edge of his mouth quirks up but I don’t miss the slightest bit of redness on the back of his neck. “What? I’m a child of the nineties.”
Oh. Right. He’s thirty-two. Ten years older than me. I consider him, really looking at the lines of his face. There’s nothing noticeable that announces his age. But he definitely looks like a man and not a boy.
Even dressed in more casual clothes like he is today, a dark gray Henley shirt that shapes the outline of his muscled shoulders without being too tight and a pair of denim jeans that look soft and worn… My mouth waters a little, I shit you not.
Let’s just say, if he walked across my college campus, no one would mistake him for a student. My eyes linger longer than necessary on the jeans. Damn, this man can wear the fuck out of a pair of jeans. I get a little lost just watching the way his strong sloping thigh shifts as he moves between the gas and brake pedal.
At least until I notice him watching me watching him. Ahem. I avert my eyes.
The Alanis song switches to one I vaguely recognize but can’t recall the band or song name. I scrunch my face as I listen to the lyrics. “What is he saying? She’s his wonder all?”
“His wonder wall,” Jackson corrects.
“What’s a wonder wall?”
“Who knows? The band’s British.” He says that like it explains it all.
I bark out a short laugh and then press number three. It’s NPR. Okay. A bit boring but impressive. Four. Howard Stern. Interesting.
Number five. Acoustic strumming guitar and a man with a ragged voice singing an old folk song. My gaze shoots back to Jackson. It sounds a little bit like the Civil Wars except I get the feeling this is actual original folk, the kind of stuff the Civil Wars took their inspiration from.
“You’ve got eclectic tastes, my friend.”
“Different music for different moods.”
I arch an eyebrow at him. “And what mood are you in today?”
He keeps his eyes on the road. “Number eight.”
I press eight. It’s downtempo deep-house music. Slow but still with a thudding bass that I can feel underneath my seat, resonating… well, you can guess where.
I lick my lips. Eventually a woman starts singing and her deep voice caresses the melody. It’s sultry. Sensuous. The excellent sound system in the car makes the music a full-body experience. I kick off my flats and draw my legs up onto the seat. My thighs shift as the singer hits an especially low note that collides with the bass, sending an extra rumble through the speaker underneath my seat.
I look over at Jackson just in time to see him glance away from me, back to the road. The heat blooming inside me spikes. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“You know what? Forget the coffee.” I fumble with the buttons on the right side of my seat until I find the one that reclines the chair.
Then I close my eyes and settle into the uber-comfortable seat. “I think I’m just going to rest a little more until we get there.”
Jackson doesn’t say a thing and I’m tempted, so tempted, to sneak another glance at him. Is he looking at me again? Is the music making him feel the same way I feel right now? Or does it just seem like music to chill out to for him?
Then again, this is the guy who destresses to screaming metal bands.
But I don’t even so much as peek at him. Self-control wins the day. Or it would if I were actually sleepy and that damn music weren’t making my pussy throb crazily.
I press the back of my head against the seat with force enough it makes my neck strain. God. Well. Jackson said it only takes forty-five minutes to get there. So that means, what? Only another half hour of this torture.
Oh goody.
“All right, just put your thumb there and move it gently in a circle,” Jackson’s voice is low in my ear, his arms wrapped around me from behind.
I bite my lip and concentrate as I do what he says.
“That’s right. Right there. Perfect.”
My heart pumps a mile a minute at his pleased praise.
“Not too hard,” he says sharply.
“Shit.” I struggle to readjust.
The quadcopter buzzing over our heads suddenly takes a sharp nosedive.
“Shit shit shit!” I frantically try to shove the controller back into Jackson’s hands but he won’t take it.
“Jackson!”
“It’s fine,” he says at the same time.
My eyes shoot back to the quadcopter, cringing as I wait for it to crash into the small meadow beside the sloping hill of the vineyard.
But the hover copter just sits there, well… hovering. Its little quadcopter blades whir and it has righted itself about five feet from the ground, far from catastrophe.
I look down at the controller in my hand. None of my fingers are touching any buttons. “It’s just doing that… by itself?”
I look over my shoulder at Jackson and he’s smiling. I swear, when I first got to know him I didn’t think smiling was in his repertoire. But now he does it all the time.
At least around you.
The thought warms my chest. Stupid chest. Maybe my first impression was wrong. Maybe he’s the smiley-est damn dude who ever lived and he was just having an off couple weeks when I met him. I was in the company of his worst enemy at the time, so it’s certainly possible. But no, even when I came to visit him at his office the first time, on his turf, he was the same way. At least, initially.
I force my focus back to the quadcopter. It’s still just hovering there. And Jackson keeps grinning, obviously waiting for me to ask the question.
I roll my eyes at his obvious baiting. “So how is it doing it?
“It’s our foolproof design. So amateurs don’t ruin their expensive equipment while they’re learning. I put it on safe mode so whenever it comes within three feet of the ground, it automatically switches to upright hover.”
I narrow my eyes. “All right, you definitely just referred to me as an amateur, but I think you also called me a fool.”
He chuckles and his chest is so close to my back, I can feel the rumble of it. “See, that’s what I love about you. Anyone
else would be too impressed by me and my little gadget to focus on anything I said.”
Well I’m sure as hell laser-focused in on his words now. That’s what I love about you?
Holy shit. No, stop freaking out. It’s just a saying. An expression. Because he can’t— I mean we’ve only known each other for like, well, it’s been several months, but we weren’t talking for most of those and, I mean, it’s not like that—
“Here, put your hands on top of mine and try to feel how I’m moving.” Jackson takes the controller from me and I wish there was a way for me to shake my hands out without him seeing. Fuck.
“I’ll just watch,” I try to say but Jackson is already holding the controller one-handed and reaching for my retreating arm. He places my hand, arranging my fingers to cover his on the small joystick. He reaches for my other arm so I lift my other hand and place it on his.
Alright God, you big beautiful dame up in the sky, please don’t let him feel how much I’m trembling.
Jackson pushes the left joystick forward. The quadcopter rises straight up into the air. With his forefinger, he clicks a button and the small screen in the middle of the controller lights up. A bird’s-eye view of where we’re standing comes into focus on the screen. I see the tops of our heads growing smaller and smaller as the drone ascends.
I can’t help letting out a little gasp. Of course I know that CubeThink makes copters equipped with cameras, but I didn’t think the one Jackson was letting me practice with would come with such advanced equipment. The image we’re seeing is crisp and professional. The vineyards are spread out on beautiful sun-soaked hills and it looks movie quality.
“Let’s bring her back down a bit,” Jackson says and I swear he pulls me even closer against his body. I split my time between watching the dark speck in the sky and looking down at the monitor. The footage is so smooth, not jerky at all.
I look back into the sky. The whirring object comes closer into view, but instead of heading toward us, Jackson uses the second joystick to veer to the right, skimming the drone right over the top of the plantings in the closest vineyard.
I look down at the screen and it’s so beautiful it makes my chest hurt. Greenery bursts from the top of each staked vine. The drone flies straight down the row, slowly lifting in elevation as it goes, panning out to see the vineyard as a whole. It’s magnificent to watch.
Jackson’s handle of the controls is perfect, even though it’s got to be awkward reaching around me like this. The image doesn’t jolt but is smooth and continuous as the copter glides back up into the sky. Yet again, the squares of each vineyard and the rolling hills of the larger valley come into view.
“All right, color me considerably impressed.” The thing is, I’m not even being sarcastic. He’s built a truly amazing machine.
I feel his shrug. I turn my head toward him. “Oh, come on. I didn’t think you were one for false modesty.”
His mouth is a straight line, though. “It could be improved,” is all he says as he brings the quadcopter back in again.
His words surprise me. Then again, I suppose they shouldn’t. I haven’t gotten to see much of this perfectionist side to Jackson before the glimpses throughout this past week as I’ve begun working directly for him. He’s exacting, constantly pushing himself and his team for better and better. But unlike a lot of people with his ambition and personality bent, he’s not an asshole about it.
“Your work is personal to you,” I say as the drone comes back in range and lands smoothly on the ground at our feet.
“Sure, I guess,” Jackson says. Again I feel the arms around me lift in a slight shrug. The drone is down and I wasn’t doing much learning while it was in the air. There’s no real reason for him to still be holding me but I don’t pull away.
“I don’t know how to do it any other way. I feel like,” he pauses like he’s searching for words, “like the people working for me see that I’m demanding just as much of myself as I’m asking of them. If every project is a passion project, well then, we’re all working toward something special. It’s more than a job.”
I can feel his eyes on me so I twist a little in his arms to look up at him. Those goddamn eyes of his. So intense and piercing.
“But it’s also not my whole life,” he says, eyes flicking back and forth between mine. “That’s actually something I’ve been realizing only recently.” He goes quiet after that revelation.
I don’t ask him what’s changed. I’m too afraid of his answer. I swallow and bat his hands away from the controller. “Well if I’m going to work on these copters, it’s just embarrassing if I can’t even keep one in the air for more than ten seconds at a time.”
He chuckles easily and doesn’t try to steer the conversation back to deeper waters.
“All right,” he says. “Remember that your left joystick is all about lift and the right one is for directionality. If you get in trouble, just let go of the controls and she’ll hover wherever she’s at.”
I smile as I take over but inside all I can think is, please don’t find a way to fix the problem with the new drone. If Jackson can’t correct it, then no matter what Gentry threatens, there’s simply nothing for Gentry to leverage me for.
We spend a couple more hours out in the meadow. Once I learn the trick about letting go if I get in trouble and allowing the copter to hover, it’s a lot easier. Yeah, apparently the fear of crashing the thing every three seconds was really holding me back. Once I get past that, it turns out the controls are a lot more user-friendly than I expected.
My video is still much more jerky than Jackson’s, but by the end of the first hour, I’m definitely getting the hang of it. Jackson brought a second quadcopter and several batteries for each of us so we could have a long afternoon flying together.
After a while all my worries have drifted away and I’m simply having fun. A truly shocking concept. Jackson is a master at maneuvering his copter and helps guide me when I lose mine a couple times. They fly so high they seem to disappear into the white clouds.
The sun is warm on my skin when we finally bring them back home for the last time. We’re flying low and I see some trees ahead.
“Trees,” Jackson says.
“Saw them.” I follow the instructions Jackson gave me earlier about what to do whenever an obstruction comes into my path—push forward on the left joystick to lift straight up until I’m sure I’ve cleared it. The drone is too far away for me to visually track with my eyes, but looking at the screen I can see we’re past the patch of trees and I drop altitude again.
“You know, really all your copters need is to know what’s right in front of them. All the other stuff on the other sides isn’t important. Like us, we just need to know about the trees in front of us and then we correct...”
Jackson’s hands drop off his controller, sending his copter into hover mode wherever it may be, as he turns to me, mouth open. “Oh my God. I’m an idiot.”
Oh shit.
It just popped out of my mouth.
An offhand comment.
One of those little thoughts you have.
“Of course!” He starts to pace back and forth, one hand to his forehead. “I’m such an idiot. We don’t have to process the data for everything on all sides of the copter. I mean, yes,” he waves a hand dismissively, “they could have a low-level filter that takes the three-sixty view into consideration, but we really only need a forty-five degree window of what is directly in front of the copter to do more in-depth analysis on. I’ve been trying for too much. Trying to get the hardware where I want it instead of accepting its limitations and finding other ways to get the job done. It’s so simple but I couldn’t see it because I was being such a damn perfectionist!”
No.
No no no no no—
An excited frenzied light sparks in Jackson’s eyes. “If we focus just on the first few Eigenvalues of the latent space translation, then capture only the most important signal, we’d detect potential objects on a co
llision course. Then we use that as the first-pass filter and do the in-depth analysis of the field of view. But only in the direction of travel.” He looks at me, excitement pouring from him in energetic waves.
“Do you realize what this means?” He grabs me by the waist, easily lifting me and swinging me around in a circle. “I bet we can reduce our calculation time by a factor of three. Three!”
“Three,” I whisper, a watery smile on my face.
Emotion clogs my throat. He’s so excited.
He sets me down and grabs his controller to guide his drone back in, but I can see his mind working a hundred miles a minute. He’s probably doing calculations in his head, just itching to get to a computer so he can start coding.
If what he’s proposing works, he’ll fix the problem and then some. Reducing the calculation time by a factor of three means the drone will have real-time reactions.
Jackson will perfect his new drone.
Which is exactly what Gentry wants.
And fuck me, me and my stupid big mouth might have just helped Gentry get it.
There’s nothing to do but help Jackson start coding when we get back to the house. He’s all fired up to get working. And it’s not like I can fudge the code. He’s too skilled. He’d recognize it and wonder what the hell I was doing.
So we worked together on two systems he has set up in his computer room, each with three massive monitors. I imagine this is his equivalent of musicians who have studios in their houses.
I’ve worked with dimensionality reduction data before so he sets me on that while his fingers start flying to restructure the main code to the drone’s central program.
It’s all right there in front of me. The code that Gentry is willing to ruin lives over. God. I swallow against the queasiness in my stomach and take a sip of Mountain Dew. In the back of the room there’s a soda fountain stand like you’d see in a fast-food store with every soda anyone could want and beside it, a coffee bar. I figured the carbonation might help settle my stomach, but now I wonder if all the sugar isn’t just making me feel more nauseous.