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A113-63s

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The weekend saw Tanya and Mari cleaning Austin’s apartment and settling with the landlord.  Tanya’s injury prevented her from doing the heavy work, but she was able to charm the guy into giving back the large security deposit even though the place would need some work.  Most of his important things had already been taken care of, but they took items like what would now be a lifetime supply of shaving cream.

Schedule balancing was a constant hassle and they were wondering if this was too big for two giants.  The rule was that if Austin was  sleeping it had to be in a secure, bug-proof place.  At least for now that meant the glass cabinet. And not talking about the need to find a third in front of him.  At least not yet.

Mari was waitressing full time and Tanya’s Summer session began the following Tuesday along with the restaurant the week after as her injury repaired.  For his part Austin tired to find remote work, but his skill set and inability to press the keys stood in the way.  During the days he watched youtube videos on watch repair and jewelry making to see if parts would be accessible to him. He could draw well and even tried his hand at micro portraits in pencil, but there probably wouldn’t be a market unless people knew the creator was tiny.  Not bringing in money was a big deal.  In the meantime he lied to his parents about his situation and came up with an excuse to stay away from the big family reunion in August.

The first of July came with a letter from campus housing that Tanya would be getting a roommate in mid July for a workshop.   That did it.  They had to find an apartment and be fast about it.  Mari lied and said she had a bad allergic reaction to some common spider bites so they needed a place that could be kept clean.  Austin felt terrible about not contributing much to expenses, but the two giant women pointed out he didn’t need as much. 

Life, in short, was ok but frustrating for all three.   It was then that Tanya asked the right question.

On her way back from class she noticed a pink punk haircut in the sea of should level women’s heads.  “Kennedy?”

Kennedy spun around and looked up.  “Oh..  you’re the girl who wanted to know about 3d printing.  ‘find what you wanted?”

“Not really.  Maybe I can pick your brain some time.”

“I’m free for two hours if you’ve got some time.”

“Yeah, that’d be great!”

She pointed to the new engineering building.  “Over there.  You can see what I’m working on and some printers.  Maybe that’ll help.  And I’m sorry, my mind isn’t very good for names.  You’re …”

The taller young woman bent a bit and extended her hand out of habit “Tatiana Dajnovsckaya, but just Tanya for short.”

“I love your accent Tanya, how long have you been here?”

“More than ten years.   I’m a citizen now, but the accent is still there.”

“That project, wasn’t it a precision doll house or something?”

“Yeah.  A guy wants to make nearly perfect homes twenty times smaller than normal.”

“Sorry if I asked before, but that’s a weird scale.  Why’d he choose it?

“Something very important was that size so he has to build around it.”

“Now this it’s coming back…”

Kennedy unlocked her door with her phone and showed Tanya in.

“Wow, this is so, so.. “

“messy…”

“Well, maybe, but impressive too.  Are these little drones?”

“Quadcopters.. you can buy ‘em, but mine have some sensors I built and a computer link.  It’s super smart at flying through crowded places.”  she glanced at Tanya who looked amazed and continued. “It flies itself -well soon.  Right now it’s computer is here”  she tapped a MacBook.  “No human makes decisions. You just tell it a place and a time and it navigates and avoids obstacles itself.”

Tanya picked it up without thinking to ask.  “It’s so small.”

“800 grams and it’ll carry a 100 gram payload.  That’s the hard part.  My work has to weigh less.  Less than four ounces.”

I’d love to see it fly.”

“I’ve got one on charge.”  She unplugged it from its charger and switched it on.  Then she typed something into her laptop.  “They’re talking.  It’s mapped most of the room out but it doesn’t know about us, if the door is open or closed and things like that yet.  I’m going to tell it to take photos of the corners of the room and do the same for the room next door.”

“How does it get there?”

“It doesn’t know.  It’ll try to go there, but the door is closed.  It’ll  that, let me know and return to it’s charger.” She liked on a button and it rose into the air slowly turning around as it went.  Kennedy narrated.

“It’s mapping the room with a laser range finder. One of the smallest in the world. See - “she pointed to an image Tanya didn’t know how to interpret.  “it sees us and will stay away.”

The whirring platform paused just under six feet up  and made its way to each corner before turning 90 degrees clockwise.  “It’s taking it’s photos.”  Then it approached the door and soon turned around and flew back to it’s charger.

“Wow.  And you can just buy these?”

“The quadcopter part.  There’s a lot of electronics and software we added. Years of work by our department.”

“Let’s go to the shop and I’ll show you some of the printers.”

They went down two floors to the basement. Someone was welding and there was a lot of noise form machines. 

“We build things here.  Things you can touch.  Programming’s ok, but that isn’t what drives me.  Smart flying machines on the other hand…”  She opened another door and the smell of plastic rolled out.  Two rows of machines with transparent boxes of various sizes were were separated by an aisle.  

“Here they are”  she said with a flourish of her hand. “ almost any shape you can imagine up to about fifty centimeters on a side. out of a kind of plastic.  We use them for prototypes.  There’s another machine that does metals like aluminum, brass and stainless steel.  He’s very popular when someone wants to make some jewelry.”

“What about little houses?”

“You could make furniture and stuff for the inside, but it’d be wasteful and slow.  But you could laser cut walls and glue together a little house.  The laser cutters are computer-controlled too.. all you need is the design and whatever you want cut.  You could use thin wood.”  she paused “come to think of it I asked if anyone did precision house models after we first talked. No one did, but you could.  They were wondering if it was an art project.  It wouldn’t be hard if you had the design plans.”

“Could you use an architect’s plans?”

“They’d have to be translated to a form the laser cutter understood.”

“If I, I mean if he gets serious who do I talk to?”

“Try me.  People’s interests change and I know everyone here.  This might be a fun project.  They’re always trying to find art collaborations.”

“thanks!  I probably will.  Now I have another question.”

A machine made a piercing squeal.  “Let’s find a quieter place.”  Kennedy suggested.  They went up to the Engineering lounge. 

“Here goes.  I know someone with a skill and a handicap.  You look at him and think he’s way too challenged to do much of anything.  Even light weights are be too much.  But he’s smart and expert working on tiny things.  Do you know about anything he could do to make a living?  He’s on his own now without work and gets very depressed.”

Kennedy sat and thought for awhile. “Can he travel?”  

“Not easily,  He has to work from home.  He needs a lot of support.”

“What’s his training?”

“He has a college degree, I think in history, but that’s before his accident.”

“How old?”

“Early twenties I think..”

“and he’s really good with small mechanical devices?”

“Yeah.. like the smallest gears in a watch.  You just can’t expect him to use much force.”

“Has he tried medical instrument repair?”

“I don’t know. What’s that?”

“There are a lot of fancy very expensive instruments used in surgery that break down and need fixing.  Some of it needs to be done under microscopes,.  I think the repair guys do very well.”

“know a company?”

“I can find out..”

They talked about handicaps, tiny houses, helicopters, men and restaurants for another hour and agreed to have lunch together soon.  Tanya liked her a lot.  She even wondered how Kennedy was with tiny men.

Tanya was bubbling when she opened the door. “Hey Austin!  I learned something today.  Have you thought about fixing medical instrumentation?  I talked to someone who sent me over to the medical school.  Some of the surgical instruments are super expensive and they need repair.  There’s always a backlog getting them fixed.  I have three company names that use remote workers. Most of it is sent to careful people in Japan and Switzerland.  You can get in touch.”

“never thought about it. I don’t know anything about their tools.,”

“As long as you’re mechanical and can read the repair manuals.  We can help if things need to be moved and you can do the careful work.”

“Yeah - I’d love to talk to them.”

“A few things.  First I told them you were physically challenged.  You sort of are…  and then said you have special tools that let you work on really small things.  I told them to think about you like a mechanically skilled guy from Lilliput.”

“False advertising” he laughed “Lilliputians are giants to me..”

She laughed.  “so you’re saying I’m a double giant…”

“at least.”

They were getting on well.  There was no way an exchange like that could have happened six weeks ago.  The talk back in June gave them trust and openness they needed to build on.  She still had a lot of guilt and he fought the resentment that came up when they were overly protective, but the direction was generally positive.  

Two companies were very interested and would send out training pieces.  If they were happy there would be a paid training period followed by regular work.  One company offered regular employment while the other would consider him an independent contractor.  The money was amazing - twice what the job he had lined up before the accident paid. 

“Mari won’t like this..”

Tanya looked puzzled.

“She wants me in movies, commercials and ads..”

Tanya laughed, but realized it would probably work.

He continued  “And can you believe it?  She even wants me in a Victoria’s Secret ad!”

“Shit, that’d work” Tanya said almost instantly.   Austin was startled by her response. 

She noticed and moved the conversation  “ ‘still have to find the apartment…”

“We’ll do a lot better now.”

“Not yet.  Let’s wait and see.  We can always get a short lease if it looks good and move..”

It frustrated him when she was right like that. 

“There’s something else too..”  she waited for him to look up at her again.  “The girl who tipped me off to the medical instrument work was Kennedy. She’s a grad student in engineering.  She was showing me their 3d printers and we got talking about little houses.  She said you wouldn’t print one, but they have other tools that’d work.  We went to lunch and hit it off.  I’m pretty sure we could use their shop.  She said they like to get involved with art projects and a perfect little house would be that. I think you’d like her.  Her project is little drones that fly inside.  Maybe you can even have a helicopter.”

“Maybe there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.  I’d like to be more self sufficient and not tie you guys down so much.”

______

Mari was excited by the news.  She had been watching him lose faith in himself trying to find almost any kid of work he could do at home.  

“Wanna celebrate with a date Sunday morning?”  The working arrangement was they were all friends until further notice and could ask each other out on dates.   The two giant women had dramatically toned down their sexual curiosity and drive around him.  Still, both of them had private thoughts and hopes and both even found themselves dressing and buying clothes with him in mind.

“That’s an odd time, but if it’s not too early.” he said.

“Something special…”  she smirked.

For the next few days she wouldn’t leak anything, but at 7:30 in the morning the two of them were out the door. She was in heels and carrying two bags.  The ugly pink bag in her right hand had Austin inside.  He probably had no idea about the heels or the other bag.

They went two blocks from campus to Franklin High School.  She pulled out a key to get into the gym’s side door.  She’d volunteered time as an assistant volleyball coach.  The season had been over for a long time, but they never asked for her keys.  She used to come in early on Winter mornings to run wind sprints on the wooden floor.  No one else was ever around.

Inside she switched on the lights and made her way onto the basketball floor and carefully dropped both bags onto the bleacher seats…  

“Hang on.  I need to get something ready to surprise you.”

Great..  the last time he had a big surprise. He could hear a zip and wood on wood steps on the floor.  

She carefully placed it on the floor and looked across the long side of the court. Then she unzipped his back and lifted him out.  He was ok with her thumb and forefinger against his sides by now.  It wasn’t as nice as riding on a palm, but much faster and being carried by his arm wasn't exactly comfortable.   She put him down next to the tiny blue Cobra.  He leaned against it with her towering overhead.

“Remember the race we talked about?  Well … you’re on.  Down to the other end on the diagonal’s about 2000 feet.  I’ll stay walking - one foot always on the ground and I’ll give you a two second head start, cause I’m at speed in no time.  They aren't that high, but  I’m wearing heels to slow me down too.  Fair?”

This’d be fun.  He may even have a chance… depends on the the handicap and how well this is tuned.  He’d been dying to open it up. 

"Wanna make it interesting?"  she asked. 

__________

[The full size more detailed 4000 pixel render goes out to donors]

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Comments6
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ktantan's avatar
Wow! powerful scene! his lean on the stylish car and her sexy shoes - it could easily be a car commercial or an album cover :)
Amazing work!