Author Notes

When I began writing this story, I had no idea this invention actually exists today. I had told my brother about the story, and he said he thought there was something like it. I hadn't found it when I first started researching it, but further research revealed that a device called the OrCam MyEye was invented in 2010, which does exactly what this device does. A video of the OrCam MyEye can be found at: https://cdn.commercev3.net/www.maxiaids.com/downloads/media/OrCam%20MyEye%20IntroEN.mp4 And here I thought I had invented it for the story! Just goes to show you that it's easy enough to conceive of an invention, but another thing entirely to actually make one that works. Let's see if Alan can do it in 1986. CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school.

Recap of Chapter 24: It’s Halloween night, and Ginnie and Tommy pay a call to Alan’s shop dressed in costumes. Archie freaks out when he sees them and hides under the bench until Tommy pulls him out. He recognizes them without their masks and talking normally.

 

When Tommy returns from trick-or-treating, while eating candy, he tells Alan and Ginnie of his speech in his public speaking class and how he used Alan’s trick of playing along after he misspeaks.

 

In bed later that night, Alan thinks about dyslexia, and a few things Ginnie had said earlier plus Archie’s behavior tonight give him an idea for an invention that would help dyslexics understand the written word. The invention was a pair of glasses that would translate the written word into speech and read it back to the wearer.

 

 

Chapter 25

 

 

I decided not to tell anyone about this idea just yet until I’ve had a chance to think about it some more and decide if I’m just kidding myself with the concept and my ability to develop it, or whether I’ve really got something here, and I’m up to the task of turning it into a reality. I wasn’t sure just yet. I would have to begin doing some research about the various components and whether or not they can be fit together in an arrangement like the one I’ve envisioned.

In the meantime, I needed to keep developing the curriculum for my programming class and get ahold of some used computers to refurbish for my classroom. I pictured a hands-on class where the students would try things on their own in class and work on their assignments too in case they didn’t own a computer at home. I put a ‘used computers wanted’ ad in the newspaper to acquire a few. I pictured a class size of four students at a time. I decided to broach Tommy about becoming one of my first guinea pig students.

I had dinner that night at the Boardmans’, where I mentioned this to Ginnie first while helping her prepare the meal. She thought it would be great for Tommy and asked how much I planned to charge for it. “I’m thinking this first class will be free since it will largely be experimental to determine the best way to go about it for future classes. I’d like to try it out on middle schoolers first and see how they do with it.”

“Maybe Tommy can suggest some of his classmates who might be interested.”

“That’s kinda what I was hoping.”

When we were well into the meal, I said, “So, Tommy, I’m thinking of starting up my new computer programming class and was wondering if you’d like to be one of my first students in the class?”

“Sure, I would! I really want to learn how to write programs. I’d like to be able to create my own games using some of my artwork.”

“That’s a terrific goal, but the class probably won’t take you quite far enough for that but will instead introduce you to basic programming concepts and techniques. You’ve got to learn to walk before you can run.”

“So, I won’t be able to create games right away?”

“Afraid not. Simple ones, yes, but there’s a whole lot you have to learn first before what you’ve got in mind.”

“That’s okay. As long as it’s fun.”

“I think it is. I’m betting you will too. Here’s the thing. I’m thinking of a class size of four, and each of you would have a computer to work on. Is there anyone else you know around your age who might be interested in such a class?”

“Not sure. I can talk it up and ask around.”

“What about Artie?” asked Ginnie. “Do you think he’d be interested? He strikes me as a pretty bright kid. Not always so kind, but bright enough.”

“I don’t know how well he does in math and science, ‘cause he’s in 8th grade, and I’ve never been in a class with him. Do you have to be good at math to understand programming?”

“It sure helps. If you can do math well, it shows you have a logical mind, and that’s very important in programming.”

“I’ll tell him about it, and see if he’s interested.”

“Great. And if there’s anyone else you talk to who may be interested, I’ll be holding an orientation meeting for the kids and their parents in a couple of weeks where we’ll talk about what the class will cover. I’ll have details of that soon.”

 

 

 

The following day, Ida Beeman came in carrying a radio in a box.

“Afternoon, Miss Ida. What have we got today?”

“Hello, Mr. Alan. We got here a busted radio. Ain’t completely busted, but all fuzzy-sounding and I can’t seem to get my fav’rite station no more. Didn’t drop it or nothin’. Jus’ stop workin’ right.”

“Got it. If you can leave it, I’ll open it up and take a look inside and call you with what I find. I’ll give you an estimate then. Sound okay?”

“That fine, Mr. Alan.”

“Say, Miss Ida. I’m starting up a computer programming class for middle schoolers. I know your grandson is in middle school. Do you think he’d have any interest in learning to program a computer?”

“Leroy real quick wit’ numbers. That boy need sumthin’ ta get him off his butt and quit watchin’ that TV all day. He ain’t the best of students, but he bright enough. We don’t have no computer, though.”

“Wouldn’t need one. I’ll have them here. Maybe this would give him something to be excited about. Why don’t you have him come talk to me, and I can tell him about it and see if he’s interested?”

“I will, Mr. Alan. That be real good if he cotton to somethin’ beside that TV.”

“Great. I’ll call you tonight about the radio. I’ve got your number.”

“Awright den. You take care, Mr. Alan. I tell Leroy ta come see you.”

“Thank you, Miss Ida.”

 

 

 

That night at the Boardmans’ for dinner (we’d begun eating most of our dinners together now), Tommy mentioned he had talked to his friend Callie about the class.

“She said she might be interested in coming, but she wanted to talk to her cousin first. She said her cousin took some programming classes at college, and she wanted to ask her what it was like. I also saw Artie after school today and mentioned it to him. At first, he said no, but I guess he thought about it a little because later he said maybe.”

“Okay, great. That will be enough for now. I think Ida Beeman’s grandson may want to be in the class too.” I’ll start planning an orientation meeting and let you know when that will be.”

It’s been two weeks since I first decided to hold one, and tonight was the orientation meeting. During those two weeks, I purchased two used computers from folks who had bought newer models. I’ve upgraded the processors and the RAM and loaded the system disks with Microsoft BASIC—the programming language we would be using in class. I had prospects to buy a few more computers as well, so that I fully expected to have the required four for the class, which would begin in January after the holidays were over.

The meeting went well, and I have my four students all signed up and ready to begin in January. Besides Tommy the other three are Artie, Callie Lyons, and Leroy Beeman.

Callie seems like a real sweetie. Tommy had just invited her to the Christmas dance the week before Christmas, and she accepted. He had a few questions for us at dinner tonight.

“This is my first school dance. What should I wear to it?”

Ginnie said, “We always used to wear pretty dresses, and the guys wore jackets and ties. Alan, you were a high school teacher recently. What are the kids wearing these days to dances?”

“Well, it’s not a prom, so no need for formal dress, but jacket-and-tie is right. Do you have a good-looking sportscoat?”

“Do I, Mom?”

“Probably not one that fits anymore. I think you’re going through a growth spurt now, and the one you’ve got will be too small for you. I’ll take you to buy a new one this weekend. I’m sure Callie will probably be buying a dress to wear. I know I always wanted to buy a new dress for dances.”

“Will you drive us, Mom, or do you have a shift at the hospital that night?”

“I didn’t think of that. Let me check my schedule.”

“I’ll take them if you have a shift,” I volunteered.

“Would you? That would be so nice, if it turns out I’m scheduled for that night. Thank you so much!”

“Yeah, thanks, Alan,” added Tommy.

“Not a problem.”

He had a few more questions, but after he got them all answered, I decided to bring up my new invention idea. I’d been thinking about it off and on for the last two weeks, and I thought now might be a good time to tell Ginnie and Tommy about it.

“On a different subject, I want to run an idea by you both concerning something I’ve been thinking about since Halloween. Remember how Archie freaked when he saw you in your costumes and later relaxed when you talked to him and he realized it was you and not some monsters? Well, that gave me an idea for an invention.

“What if you could wear a pair of glasses that would see written words and translate them, so that a voice could read them out loud through a little microphone mounted on the glasses that only you could hear? Wouldn’t that go a long way for a dyslexic to understand better what he’s reading? And after a while, when he continually hears the correct interpretation of written words, it would help him to read them better on his own without the glasses. What do you think about such an invention?”

Ginnie said, “You’re kidding, right? If such a thing were possible, this would be the biggest discovery in dyslexia research ever. You’d probably make millions off it. Even blind people could use them if they knew where to point them. Is this possible?”

“That would be so cool, Alan,” said Tommy. “When are you going to make them?”

“To answer your mom’s question first, yes, I believe this is possible, and I’m planning to start working on them soon after I get the class up and running smoothly. When they’ll be ready for testing is anyone’s guess, but you can be my first guinea pig, when I do, okay, Tommy?”

“Yeah!”

Ginnie said, “Alan, this is amazing! Do you know enough to design and construct such a thing?”

“At this point, no. I have to be honest about that. But I’ve begun researching the fields of digital photography and text-to-voice applications because this invention would need to combine those two technologies into one integrated system for it to work. I’ll be able to concentrate my research more heavily after I get the class going.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go advertising this idea very much. You wouldn’t want anyone stealing it before you have a chance to patent it, or even afterwards if they were to infringe on that patent. I know that’s my suspicious nature talking, but I think that could happen if you aren’t careful.”

“You’re right. That’s good advice. Mum’s the word.”

Ginnie said, “Tommy, that goes for you, too. Don’t go telling anyone about this just yet, okay? This is a really important invention if Alan can actually make it.”

“Got it, Mom. I won’t.”

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school.

Chapter 29
What We See - Chapter 26

By Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 25: Alan decides it’s time to begin teaching a programming class to some interested students, and he asks Tommy if he and some friends might like to be the guinea pigs to take his intro to programming class. Tommy is thrilled at the prospect and finds a couple of friends to fill out the four-person class. Alan also talks to Miss Ida about it and asks if her grandson might be interested in attending, and she says she will get him to talk to Alan about it. Alan decides to hold an orientation for the four students, which now include Tommy, Artie, Ida’s grandson Leroy Beeman, and Tommy’s friend from school, Callie Lyons.

 

Over dinner one night, Alan also tells Ginnie and Tommy about his new invention. They are intrigued by it and think it could be very valuable. Ginnie encourages him to take great care in talking about it because it is such a good idea that she doesn’t want to see anyone steal it from Alan before he’s had a chance to patent it. He agrees to be careful.

 

 

Chapter 26

 

Two weeks later

 

 

It was the night of the Christmas dance. On the way over to Callie’s house, Tommy sat silently in the back seat. “Are you feeling a little nervous?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’ve never been out with a girl before. How do I know what to say?”

“She’ll probably have a pretty dress on. Just tell her she looks nice, and you’re looking forward to the dance. And if she doesn’t introduce you first, make sure you introduce yourself to her parents. If they go to shake your hand, don’t hesitate; just give her dad a good, firm handshake. Her mom, just slightly firm. Don’t want to hurt her hand.”

“I’m a little nervous about dancing. I’ve never danced before. Mom showed me a few things, but I looked like a spazz.”

“Just watch what the other kids are doing, and try to copy them. Everyone kind of looks like a spazz doing the fast dances. Did she show you how to hold a girl for the slow dances?”

“Yeah.”

“Hold her pretty close. It’s hard if you’re too far apart. You’ll be fine.”

We pulled into her driveway, and Tommy got out. “Remember to introduce yourself,” I called to him as he headed to the door.

A few minutes later, they came out together. Callie had a coat on over the top of her dress, so I couldn’t see the whole effect, but she looked pretty from what I could see. She wore glasses, but the frames were small and stylish. Her long, auburn hair was wavy and looked professionally coiffed, and she had on some subtle lipstick. She seemed a little surprised to see me at the wheel.

“Hi, Callie. Don’t you look pretty?”

“Hi, Mr. Phelps. Thanks. I didn’t expect to see you driving us.”

Tommy said, “My mom is a nurse and had to work a shift tonight, so Ala… I mean Mr. Phelps agreed to drive us. He’s my next-door neighbor.”

“Oh.”

We started up, and nothing was said for a while. I could sense the nervousness coming from the back seat. I thought I would help out. “I’m sure looking forward to having you both in my first programming class. Do you have a computer at your house, Callie?”

“Not yet, but we’re getting one for Christmas as a family gift.”

When nothing further was volunteered, I asked, “What made you decide to take my class?”

“I talked to my cousin, Abby, who lives in Pennsylvania and is a junior at Penn State. She’s a math and engineering major. I asked her if she had taken any programming classes, and she said she had. She said it’s fun, and I’d probably really like it.”

“She sounds like she’s really smart,” said Tommy.

“Yeah, she’s like a genius. My mom and her mom are sisters, and we’re going to go visit them over Christmas vacation.”

“D-do you have any brothers or sisters?” Tommy asked her.

“Yeah, I’ve got two little brothers. You probably heard them making wisecracks when we were leaving. They like to tease me, but they’re okay. How about you?”

“Nah. It’s just me and Mom. You met her the other night at the orientation meeting.”

“Yeah, she was nice.”

The ice was broken, and they were off and running, talking together the rest of the way to the school. The dance would be over at 10:00, and I told them I would be here to pick them up. They thanked me for the ride and went in together.

 

 

 

I returned home and began working on another used computer I had purchased, preparing it for the class. Just one more to buy, and I’d have the required four I planned to use. I also started creating the lesson plans for the first two classes and wrote and tested the program code I would use to illustrate the principles.

I had purchased a whiteboard for smaller examples to explain in class, but for most of the longer code samples, the kids would be able to load, view, and run them from their own machines during the class.

I left a little before 10:00 to pick the kids up from the dance. They were both smiling as they approached the car. Tommy even held the car door open for Callie.

“So how was the dance?” I asked them after they’d both buckled their seatbelts. I noticed they were sitting right next to each other now, versus apart when we first drove to the dance. They looked cute together back there.

“It was fun,” they said together. They both said, “Jinx,” and laughed.

Tommy said, “There was a live band of ninth graders, and they were pretty good. The music was really loud, though. It was kind of hard to talk.”

“What did you say?” asked Callie in a loud voice.

“I said, ‘Chickens like to squawk’,” he hollered back.

“Oh, I thought you said, ‘Children shouldn’t jaywalk’,” she continued loudly, and they were both laughing. This was apparently a continuation of a joke from inside. Nice to see how comfortable they were together.

When he walked her to the door, I saw it open, and her father appeared. Whether Tommy had intended to or not, this prevented any kind of goodnight kiss. They talked to him for a minute, then Callie went inside, and Tommy returned to the car.

After a few seconds of silence, I said, “Well?”

“It was great. We really had a good time together.”

“Seems like you got over your nerves.”

“Yeah. She’s really easy to talk to. She talks a lot, but she’s interesting. She’s really smart and funny too. I really like her.”

“Really?” I said, teasing him a little.

He grinned. “Yeah, really.”

It was nice to see him so happy.

 

 

 

Ginnie and I had been out together several times in the past few weeks, and she felt it was time for me to meet her friends from work. We went to their annual Christmas party, where she introduced me as her boyfriend. If anyone had known about my past, they never let on, and I was accepted into the group. I enjoyed meeting her co-workers, and we had a good time.

Tommy, Ginnie, and I spent Christmas day together. We exchanged presents in the morning, and she and I prepared a sumptuous meal of glazed ham with side dishes of macaroni and cheese and green beans with almonds. Apple pie a la mode for dessert. And, of course, eggnog. We were all stuffed after that and spent the rest of the day relaxing and dozing. We also watched It’s a Wonderful Life together on TV.

 

 

 

Two weeks later, I held the first of my programming classes. I had spent several days prior to the class replacing the customer counter top with a top that overhung on the customer side, allowing my four students to sit on stools with room for their legs underneath. On the counter top, I had placed the four computers side by side—another reason for limiting the class size to four; there simply wouldn’t have been room for more. I set the whiteboard on an easel I had purchased, which faced the students. My own computer was next to it.

“I’d like to welcome the four of you to ‘An Introduction to Basic Programming.’ As I mentioned during the orientation, I’m Mr. Phelps, and the class is eight weeks with two hours for each class. There won’t be any homework, but there will be several programs to write that we will work on in class, and anyone who wants to come in early or stay late on Saturdays is welcome to do so to work on them or any other program you care to work on. There will be no game-playing, though, unless it's a game you created yourself.

“We’ll be starting with the fundamentals of programming, and we will learn the BASIC computer language to write our programs in. BASIC is an acronym for Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code and is a good, fairly simple programming language to learn and use, although it’s very robust. Does anyone know what that means?”

Callie raised her hand, and I called on her. “I think it means it can do a lot.”

“Exactly. You can write all kinds of programs to handle some simple things and some very complex things. Now what exactly is a computer program?” I called on Leroy Beeman, who had his hand raised.

“It’s a set of instructions that tells the computer what to do.”

“That’s right. You’ll learn to use English words like Read and Print and For and Next and If to create instructions for the computer.” I picked up the mouse on my computer and said into it, “Computer, multiply these two numbers: 6,237 and 3,128 and print out the answer.” The kids laughed.

“Do you think the computer will understand what I just instructed it to do, like they do on Star Trek?”

“’Course not,” called out Artie. “You’re talking into a mouse!”

We all laughed at that. “Well, even if it was a microphone, the computer wouldn’t understand. In fact, it doesn’t even understand the few English words that are part of BASIC. All it understands are 1s and 0s. So, there is system software that will translate the statements in which you write your code into the 1s and 0s the computer will understand. It’s called a compiler. We should all be thankful for compilers; otherwise, we’d have to write our instructions in long strings of 1s and 0s, and nobody would want to do that.”

I continued on with a few more fundamentals, and then we began with our first set of computer instructions in BASIC, and we wrote our first short program together. The time flew by, and the four students were completely engaged in what they were doing. All of them seemed to enjoy the class, and they asked a variety of good questions throughout.

Man, that was fun to have four such eager students who wanted to be there. No fooling around, no talking back, no petty complaining—just four kids interested in learning. If only all teaching could be like that!

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school.

Chapter 30
What We See - Chapter 27

By Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 26: Alan drives Tommy and his date, Callie, to the Christmas dance because Ginnie had to work that night. On the way, he gives Tommy some advice on meeting her parents and how to behave on a date. He later picks them up afterwards, and they seem to have really hit it off.

 

Alan holds his first computer class, and the four kids prove to be wonderful students as they begin learning programming.

 

 

Chapter 27

 

 

Over the next couple of months, the class went very well. All four of my students appeared to love the subject matter and took great interest in learning to write code. Each of them would often stay late after class and continue to work on their programs, helping each other out on their assignments and writing programs on their own that had not been assigned to them.

The pace of the class was almost too slow for this eager bunch, and it taught me a number of lessons on how to improve the curriculum for future classes. I even decided to create a second advanced programming class that explored additional concepts because all of them were interested in continuing their studies.

The star of the team was Callie Lyons. She had a very quick mind and often had a unique way of looking at an assignment. Her solutions were usually quite elegant and written in a scalable fashion, which meant that she designed them to be run against much larger datasets than what was provided in the assignment and often with fewer lines of code than the others. It was a rare talent she exhibited, and I’m sure it would set her in good stead if she chose to make a career out of it.

She was one of those modest kids who was not a showoff about her formidable skills, which is rare in someone so smart. Tommy adored her, as did the other two boys in the class, but she definitely seemed to favor Tommy. The two of them would often hang out together, and I’d seen them holding hands on several occasions. They would sometimes study and do homework together, and she seemed to grasp Tommy’s disability and would help him understand his reading assignments.

Ginnie and I loved her for that. She would sometimes join the three of us for an afternoon movie at the theater. We even took the kids to see the play West Side Story in Chicago one afternoon in April. We had met her parents, and they were wonderful people. Her father was a lawyer, and her mother, an accountant.

Aside from my repair work and my teaching responsibilities, what little time I had left I spent working on my invention. Although the concept seemed sound, size issues continued to plague me. I wanted it to be self-contained and not overly clunky-looking, but that proved to be a formidable challenge.

I was going to have to do some further research on miniaturization of the camera, the speaker, and the “computer” that would run the software. A power supply would also be needed. How would all this fit on the frame of the glasses? The glass inside the frame would have virtually no function and could either hold the users’ prescription lenses if they wore glasses or would just be clear glass if they did not, but all the rest would be functional.

I was gradually coming to the conclusion that the computer portion would have to be a separate device, placed in a user’s pocket or to the side. It would contain chips to perform the basic functions of taking the input stream of data points from the digital image produced by the camera and converting it to a data stream for the speech synthesizer. This would output a soundwave stream for the speakers.  And all this wirelessly, if possible. The power supply, in the form of a rechargeable battery, would also reside in the pocket-held computer, along with a small fan to cool the chips. I just didn’t think it could all be built into the glasses without them becoming too heavy and clunky-looking to be at all appealing to users. The wireless aspect was a big unknown, too, at this time.

On the business front, the workload was increasing as word-of-mouth customers were beginning to make up a large portion of the business. I quit placing ads in the newspaper altogether. The Yellow Pages had been delivered in December, which contained my ad, but that was the only advertising I had now. I had more than enough work to handle, and Tommy’s hours were way down due to school. A number of customers had large TV sets that were too large to bring in for repair and asked if I could come to their houses to repair them. As a one-man operation, I had to turn these jobs down.

It slowly dawned on me that I needed to hire a full-time assistant to share the workload, so I put a want ad in the newspaper for that. I’d had several applicants, but none so far had the qualifications or work experience needed to do the job without a great deal of instruction from me. I held out until I could find such a candidate.

A fellow named Warren Meyers gave me a call one afternoon, asking if the job had been filled yet. I told him it hadn’t, and I asked him a few questions about his past experience in the field. He responded well enough that I asked him to come in for an interview, which I scheduled for the following day at 12:30.

At the end of today, I had dinner at the Boardmans’. Ginnie was working the night shift this week and had to leave at 6:45, so I left too to go straighten up the shop and work on my notes for the invention. I had created physical files to document the work, which included hard copies of the design notes stored on my computer plus all literature sent to me as part of my research. I stored these in a new filing cabinet I’d purchased. Plus, I’d made diagrams of the design using purchased software called AutoCad. I kept these in both the physical file and on my computer on a hard drive I had purchased and installed inside my computer since it had not come with one.

 

 

 

Warren Meyers arrived at 12:25. He was a big guy and a bit overweight. He had a friendly face and sported a beard and mustache that were neatly trimmed. He wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt over a pair of old jeans. His resume, though, was very attractive. He said he was 30 and had been working with electronics and electrical apparatus since he was a teen. His previous employer had owned Dvorak’s  Electrical Repairs, a shop in Fort Wayne, until he retired a couple of months ago. Warren didn’t have enough to buy the business from him, and the store was still for sale but closed now.

“Part of the job, Warren, will be to travel to a few homes where there are large TV sets to repair. Do you have your own car to do that?”

“Yeah, no problem with that. I did that a bit at my former job. I kept track of the mileage, and my boss would reimburse me at a standard rate for that, Mr. Phelps.”

“You can call me Alan. That sounds fine. Do you have any computer repair experience?”

“A little, but I may need some help with that for a while. Why, do you get a lot of that?”

“It’s beginning to pick up now that home computers are starting to get popular and cheaper. I’ll be able to teach you that. The job will be 40 hours a week, Monday through Friday, 9:00–5:30 with a half-hour lunch. No weekend work. I can pay you $10 an hour. The job is yours if you want it.”

“That sounds great, Alan. When can I start?”

“This is Friday. How about on Monday? Do you live nearby?”

“Not far. North side of Grantham. Monday sounds fine.”

“I’ve also got a young man who lives next door who works with me during the summer and puts in a few hours a week during the school year. His name is Tommy Boardman, and he’s 13. He’s a good kid, and I’ve been training him as an apprentice.”

“Is he any good?”

“He’s becoming very good. He’s like a little sponge. I’ll mainly have him work with me, but he may ask you the occasional question.”

“That’s fine. I like kids.”

“Okay, then, Warren. It was great meeting you, and I’ll be happy to have your help. The store has gotten too busy for just me and Tommy, so we sure need the help.”

“Well, I’m happy to come work for you, Alan. See you Monday morning,” he said, offering me his hand, which I shook.

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop.

Chapter 31
What We See - Interlude

By Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 27: Alan’s computer class continues to go well, and the star of the class is Callie Lyons, whom all the boys adore for her charming personality. Alan continues making progress on his invention but soon realizes he won’t be able to create a single unit to be mounted on the glasses because all the necessary miniaturization isn’t there yet. He also realizes he can’t spend as much time working on it due to the increasing workload, and he decides to hire an assistant. After a few unsuccessful interviews, he hires Warren Meyers, who formerly worked at a repair shop in Fort Wayne.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interlude

Abby St. Claire

May, 1986
Penn State University,
State College, Pennsylvania

 

I have never been so humiliated in my life! I stormed out of the engineering lab with my ridiculous pumpkin and a bag of my other stuff under my arms and dumped the pumpkin into a trash barrel in the utility room down the hall. Then I left the building and beat a hasty retreat back to my apartment, where I flopped down on my bed and began to cry.

I’m at the end of my junior year at Penn State, where my major is mathematics with a minor in mechanical engineering. There aren’t a lot of women in most of my classes. In fact, I’m the only one in my ME 3 Mech Eng seminar. There are a few in the lecture portion of the class, but in the lab portion, it’s just me and about 20 guys.

Oh, that Chad! I know he’s responsible for what happened. He works next to me in the mechanics lab. He’s always made fun of me because he doesn’t think girls have any place being mechanical engineers. I thought I was done with being teased and berated when I finished grade school. I’m not even planning to be a mechanical engineer, but instead a mathematician, though I guess that’s beside the point.

The first day of lab, he said to me, “So, Abby, what’s a cute little thing like you doing taking this class with all these guys? Working on your MRS degree, are you?”

Cute little thing. Jeez!

I’m not very quick with comebacks, so I didn’t say anything, and because I’m generally a quiet person, he picks on me every chance he gets. Naturally, he got assigned to the work station right next to mine.

We’ve been working on our individual projects for the whole semester with the goal of presenting them to the class and all of the mechanical engineering faculty during the final week. Our lab instructor chose the five best to present, and mine was one of them. Chad’s was not.

I had been reading about new surgical techniques performed through tiny holes in the body, but I couldn’t find any information on the tools used, so for my project, I decided to invent some and demonstrate how they would work inside the body using a large, artificial pumpkin I had to simulate one.

Chad had never read about anything like this and poo-pooed the idea from the start, but he shut up after a while when he saw the miniature tools that I was constructing. He was working on some kind of robotic arm, but it was simplistic and clunky and looked just like a lot of robotics that have been common for a long time.

I was proud of my miniature tools and planned an impressive demonstration with them. Last night, the five finalists got our projects set up and ready to go. I placed a box upside down over the pumpkin so my setup wouldn’t look so strange before I got a chance to talk about it. I left feeling confident about the upcoming demonstration.

This afternoon, when it was my turn to go, I stood up in front of the audience and said, “My name is Abby St. Claire, and I’ve been working on miniaturized tools to perform surgical operations through small holes in the body to replace the need for large incisions.”

After I said this, I lifted up the box shielding my pumpkin “body,” and the audience started tittering. Some laughed loudly, which I thought was a little strange, but I kept going.

“Although the technology has not yet been developed for inserting a miniature video camera through a tiny hole in the body to observe the progress of the operation, it is currently under development. I will simulate this with a regular video camera placed in a much larger hole in the top of the pumpkin, which will be hooked up to a TV, allowing us to see inside while I perform various operations with my tools. I have also constructed a miniature fiberoptic light that I can insert through another small hole in the body to provide light for the surgical site. Then I—”

“Why do you need all that when we can just look through that great big smile in the front?” said Chad, sitting in the front row. The audience started cracking up when he said that. I was puzzled because I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I had a sudden suspicion.

I walked around the front of the table and saw that a big smiling face had been carved into the front of my pumpkin.  I was pretty sure who did it. I could feel my cheeks reddening.

“Please excuse me for a minute.” I then hurried over to a drawer, which contained some opaque mylar sheets, and cut a small piece. Then I got a roll of duct tape from another drawer and taped this patch over the holes that had been cut in the front of my pumpkin.

I resumed my demo. “Next, I’m going to insert the fiberoptic light through the small hole that the surgeon will make to light the site of the operation.” I tried to push my light tube through the small hole I had made last night in the side of the pumpkin. I kept trying, but it wouldn’t go through. The audience started tittering again. I looked into the metal sleeve lining the hole, and something had been stuck in there to block it. Chad again, I was sure!

I continued blushing as I picked up a pencil and stabbed it into the pumpkin to make a new hole, then I inserted the light into it, turned it on, and started the camera. Finally, I was ready to demonstrate my tools.

“The first tool I will demonstrate is a miniature saw, similar in principle to a chainsaw. I’m going to saw through a pickle I’ve placed inside the pumpkin to simulate sawing through an appendix.”

I threaded my tiny saw through the sleeve in the hole I had made into the pumpkin last night to be my surgical hole. I then pressed the switch to start the saw. It sawed through the first part of the pickle perfectly, but there was a sudden high-pitched whine, and sparks started to fly as the saw blades struck something hard. The audience began laughing again as I stopped the saw, reached inside the top of the pumpkin, and pulled the pickle out. Inserted inside the pickle was a small steel rod.

This was turning into a total fiasco! I couldn’t take it anymore. As the audience continued laughing, I picked up a bag and shoved all my stuff inside, grabbed the pumpkin under my arm, and fled out the lab door.

What a disaster, but that was a week ago. Unfortunately, the feeling of humiliation is still there to a degree.

The semester is now over and I’m on my way to visit with my Aunt Dottie and her family for a few days before I begin my summer job. I’m especially eager to see my little cousin Callie, who reminds me a lot of myself at her age of 13. She had called me back in December, asking me about taking a computer programming class, and I told her to go for it. She’s a sweetie who’s smart as a whip, and thinking about her helps me forget about Chad and that disastrous demonstration.

 

Author Notes

Those of you who read my novel Some Call It Luck will remember Abby as one of the two main characters. In a subsequent draft of that novel, this scene became the first chapter of the story. Abby also was a minor character in Saving Mr. Calvin where she had become Abby Payne after marrying Kenny Payne. CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University.

Chapter 32
What We See - Chapter 28

By Jim Wile

Recap of Interlude: We shift temporarily to a different character, Abby St. Claire, who is Callie’s cousin and a junior at Penn State University. It’s semester's end, and she is on the way to visit Callie and her family. As she is driving there, she reminisces about a disastrous demonstration she recently gave of her mechanical engineering project, in which a fellow student sabotaged the miniature tools she had created to help surgeons operate robotically with minimal invasion. 

 

 

Chapter 28

 

Late May, 1986

 

 

Warren has been working here for a couple of weeks now, and I’m quite satisfied with his work. He hasn’t missed a day yet, comes in on time, and does every task I ask of him. I’ve taught him a good bit about computers and the typical things that go wrong with them, and he’s been able to do most repairs on his own with little guidance from me.

I’m not really sure about Tommy’s impression of him. It almost seems like he might be a little bit jealous of Warren because his skills far surpass Tommy’s at present. Also, I’ve heard Tommy ask him a few questions, and Warren is often brusque with his answers and doesn’t seem to have the patience to clearly explain things, assuming Tommy knows more than he actually does.

Warren has seen me working on my new invention when I’ve had a few spare moments and was curious about what I was doing. I’ve been somewhat reluctant to share too much with him because I don’t know him well enough yet, and I’m still trying to be cautious.

We eat our lunch together, much as Tommy and I did last summer. He’s not a baseball fan, so we don’t talk about that. His chief interest seems to be poker, and he’s asked me if I know of any games he might get into. I said no, but that I liked to play chess. He also plays, and occasionally we play a game.

Ginnie has met him, and they’ve talked together a few times. The other day, she said to me, “Alan, he strikes me as a little bit creepy. He doesn’t really look me in the eye when we talk, but I’ve caught him staring at my chest a few times. And once, when I had come over to ask you something, I was wearing a skirt and sitting on a stool talking to you. Every time I looked at him, I caught him staring at my legs.”

“Well, I certainly can’t fault his taste.”

“You guys! At least you don’t appear to drool while you sneak peeks.”

I laughed at that, and she smiled.

 

 

 

 

I was beginning to get a little discouraged with the miniaturization aspect of my invention. One afternoon, right during this time, Callie came in the door accompanied by an older girl who looked like her a little. This girl was a few years older than Callie and had redder hair where Callie’s was more auburn, but they both had freckles and the same nose and eyes. This girl was very pretty, where Callie still had that slightly awkward young teen look about her with braces on her teeth.

Callie said, “Mr. Phelps, this is my cousin, Abby. She’s here, visiting for a few days. We were shopping on Main Street, and I told her I was taking a programming class from you just around the corner, and I asked her if I could introduce you to her.”

I held out my hand and said, “Hello, Abby. I’m Alan Phelps. It’s very nice to meet you. Callie has told me a lot about you. Said you were a math major at Penn State and minored in engineering.”

“Yes, it’s nice to meet you too, Alan,” she said, shaking my hand.

“I’ve got to tell you, your young cousin is a whiz in my class. She is a natural-born programmer, if I’ve ever seen one. Comes up with very creative solutions.”

“Yes, I thought that would be a good fit for her. She’s very bright.”

Callie was blushing as we both went on about her.

“Tell me, Abby, what branch of engineering are you minoring in?”

“Mechanical.”

“Well, that’s great. Electrical engineering was my minor. I was an education major. Uh, you wouldn’t happen to know much about miniaturization by any chance, would you?”

“As a matter of fact, my junior mech. eng. lab project was all about the miniaturization of surgical tools manipulated through very small incisions in the body.”

“I’m working on something right now that requires miniaturization of both a camera and a speaker. These are both electro-mechanical devices, and I sure would love to have someone to bounce ideas off. Are you familiar with the workings of those devices?”

“I used a small TV camera in my presentation. It wasn’t quite of miniature size, but I am familiar with how it worked. Speakers too.”

“Excellent. Do you think I could call you sometime to discuss them?”

“I’m going to be living with my great aunt and uncle in Dubois, Pennsylvania, this summer, where I’ll be working. I could give you their phone number. Maybe you could call me there?”

“That would be great, Abby. I’ll give you my phone number too.” I went to my desk to write my phone number down for her, and I brought her a pad and pen to write hers down. I looked over at Warren, who was staring at her.

“Abby and Callie, this is my new assistant, Warren Meyers. He’s been with me for a few weeks now.”

He came out and shook Abby’s hand. “Very nice to meet you, Abby,” he said. 

“You too, Warren,” but he didn’t let go of her hand right away, and he didn’t acknowledge Callie at all. He just kept staring at Abby. It was all rather awkward.

Abby managed to extricate her hand from his, looked at me, and said, “I’m glad we stopped by and got to meet Callie’s teacher. She speaks very highly of you.”

I walked them to the door and said, “Thanks for stopping by, Callie, and introducing us. And Abby, I’ll call you sometime in a couple weeks, maybe.”

“I look forward to it, Alan. Bye.”

“Bye, Mr. Phelps,” added Callie.

 

 

 

“Alan, I think I’m in love!” said Warren. “God, was she beautiful.”

“You could have been a little less obvious about it, you know.”

“I was using great restraint not to rip her clothes off right then and there.”

I just snorted and shook my head. I really didn’t know him well enough for that kind of joking around.

“By the way, what was that about miniature speakers and cameras? What exactly are you working on?”

I had been prepared for this and simply said, “I’ve been toying with a few ideas for computer accessories to be able to talk to someone while looking at them through your computer. Very preliminary stages at this point.”

“Well, that sounds interesting.”

“Listen, Warren, it’s close enough to quitting time right now. Why don’t you call it a day, and I’ll see you in the morning.” I’d had enough of him for one afternoon.

“Sounds great. You’re really a great boss, Alan. I’ve got a big poker game tonight, so this way I won’t have to rush through dinner to make it on time. See you tomorrow then, and thanks a million, boss.”

 

 

 

An hour later, I went next door to help Ginnie with dinner. “I met Callie’s cousin, Abby, this afternoon,” I said to her.

“Oh? What was she like?”

“She was very nice. They were out shopping on Main Street, and Callie wanted her to meet me and see where she’d been taking her programming class. She told me something interesting—she has been working on miniature tools for operations on the body in her mechanical engineering class. She’s a college student at Penn State. I really need someone to bounce ideas off, and she seemed very bright to me. Callie raves about her. So, I thought I would give her a call in a few weeks to discuss a few things.”

“Well, I would just be careful. It might not be wise to divulge too much about what you plan to do with that information.”

“Yes, I know. She didn’t strike me as the kind of person who would steal someone’s idea, but I guess you can’t be too careful.”

“You’re right. And I’d also be careful around Warren. I don’t know that I fully trust that guy. He may be a good worker, but there’s something about him that I’m just a little unsure of. How do you feel about him?”

“Well, he is a little creepy, like you’ve said. I think he made Abby feel uncomfortable today. He was really leering at her, and he said some rather crude remarks after they left.”

“Why? Is she good-looking?”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“Don’t give me that. Of course, you noticed. So, she is good-looking.”

“Well, now that you mention it, I guess she is,” I said with a smile.

“Oh, ho. Better looking than me?” she teased.

“No way. Maybe a very close second, though.”

She threw a wet dishrag at me, and I ducked out of the way, smiling as she smiled back. “Help me bring these plates in, Romeo.”
 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University.

Chapter 33
What We See - Chapter 29

By Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 28:  After two weeks, although Alan can find no fault with Warren’s work, he strikes Ginnie as somewhat creepy from the few times she has met him, making her feel uncomfortable in his presence. He’s also rather brusque with Tommy. 

 

Alan is paid a visit one afternoon by Callie Lyons and her older cousin, Abby St. Claire. Alan finds out that Abby has a mechanical engineering background and has worked with miniaturization, and he asks her if she wouldn’t mind if he called her to talk over ideas this summer. They exchange phone numbers.

 

Alan introduces Warren to Abby and Callie, and he immediately makes Abby feel uncomfortable. When the girls leave, Warren makes crude remarks about Abby’s good looks, which Alan does not approve of. He later tells Ginnie about the meeting with Abby and about how creepy Warren was with her.
 

 

 

Chapter 29

 

5 months later

Early October, 1986

 

 

Throughout the summer, business continued to be brisk. Tommy had joined Warren and me, working 28 hours per week this summer, and was becoming much more independent in his work. I could turn over certain repairs to him with complete confidence that he would do them right. I still checked over his work, but he rarely made a mistake anymore. 

Warren had even asked if he could put in some overtime hours. Apparently, he had suffered a couple of major losses at the poker table and needed the extra cash to make up for it. This suited me just fine, because there was plenty of work to do. Plus, it afforded me more time to work on my invention.

Abby and I had spoken on the phone quite a few times during the summer. She proved to be an excellent brainstormer. I eventually told her what the components she was helping me with were for, and she was very excited about the project. Complete miniaturization was probably still a ways off, but I was near to completing my first prototype with larger parts, which I hoped to finish in another couple of months.

In early summer, I followed up my first programming class with a second advanced programming concepts class for my four middle schoolers. These four had breezed through the first class and had been bugging me for a couple of months to start up a second one. They had all bought refurbished computers from me and were champing at the bit to learn more. In addition, they had all become fast friends and hung out together quite often this summer.

I took advantage of this friendship last month when Miss Ida paid me a visit. She had brought a portable space heater with her that quit working and wondered if I could fix it. 

“It start gettin’ cold at night now that autumn almos’ here. I keep this goin’ at night in my bedroom, ‘cause I ain’t got enough blankets to do the job.”

“I think I’ll be able to fix this, Miss Ida. Since you’re here, I wanted to ask you something. I’ve got big plans for a short trip next month with Tommy’s mom up to Saugatuck, Michigan. I plan to ask her something, and I’d prefer it just be the two of us.”

“Oh, I think I know what that be, Mr. Alan. You know’d her what now, ‘bout a year? Tha's enough time. I s’pose you want Leroy to invite Tommy to stay with us. That right?”

“That’s right. So, what do you think? Would you and your son and daughter-in-law mind?”

“Oh, we’d love to have Tommy for a few days. He an’ Leroy good friends now. I’ll talk to my son, but I’m sure they be okay with it. I’ll have ‘em call you tonight.”

“Thank you so much, Miss Ida. I want this to be a very special weekend. I haven’t told Ginnie about it yet. She has no idea what I’m planning.”

“Well, that sound very special awright. You buy her a ring?”

“Shhh.”

“Don’t chu worry. I ‘on’t tell nobody.” She gave me a big smile and a hug then. “Okay, den. I have my son call you tonight. You take care now,” and she left smiling.

Later that night, Leroy’s mother called, saying they would be glad to have Tommy stay with them for a few days. I thanked her very much and said I would be in touch with them later with more details and exact dates. 

Now it was time to ask Ginnie about it. The next night, after dinner, Tommy went into the living room to watch a playoff baseball game while Ginnie and I cleared the table. Before starting to do the dishes, I took her in my arms and said, “How about you and I take a little vacation for a few days up in Michigan in a few weeks? I was thinking of Saugatuck. It will be peak leaf season then, and it ought to be very pretty.”

“Mmm! Just the two of us?”

“Yep. I’ve already asked the Beemans if they’d mind keeping Tommy for a few days. It was no problem for them. So, what do you think?”

“I love the idea. What days do you have in mind? I may have to take some time off work.”

“I was thinking of going up on a Thursday and coming back that Sunday. Three nights away.”

“That sounds wonderful. I’m sure I’ll be able to get those days off.”

 

“I’ll also plan on giving Warren that Thursday and Friday off as well.”

“Good idea.”

 

I gave her a big kiss then, which we held for a good while.

“Mmm. I hope there will be plenty of that,” she murmured.

“I’m counting on it,” I said, kissing her again. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

 

 

 

That was three weeks ago. This afternoon, we checked into the Hotel Saugatuck, which was a beautiful, recently renovated hotel right on Kalamazoo Lake and only a mile or two from the Lake Michigan shore. Saugatuck itself was a lovely, quaint little town known as an art center for the many art studios and shops in the downtown area, which was a couple of miles from our hotel. We decided to spend the first night having dinner at the hotel, and on subsequent days we would explore the town and its fine restaurants. After checking in at 3:00, we made a reservation for 7:00 tonight.

We were shown to our own separate cottage apart from the main building, and it was beautifully appointed. It overlooked the lake and had a fireplace, a king-size bed, a large, jetted tub, and its own private patio. It was built for a romantic getaway, and we planned to take full advantage of that.

To set the mood properly, after unpacking, I presented Ginnie with a small box wrapped in silver paper with a white bow.

“What is this?” she asked me, smiling broadly.

“Open it and find out.”

She was not one to save wrapping paper and ripped it off in short order. She opened up the box, and I reached inside and removed its contents. I got down on one knee and said, “Virginia Boardman, I love you with all of my heart, and I can no longer picture my life without you and Tommy being a part of it. Will you please do me the great honor of being my wife and marrying me?” I said this, looking right into her eyes, which began watering.

“It would put rather a damper on the weekend if I said no, wouldn’t it?”

“I would think so, yes.”

“Well, I’d better say yes then. David Alan Phelps, I will gladly become your wife. Now get up here, where I can thank you properly.”

I rose then and placed the ring on the ring finger of her left hand, after which we embraced and shared a gentle kiss. This led to a more passionate kiss, and we spent the rest of the afternoon until dinnertime doing what we’d mainly come here to do.
 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University.

Chapter 34
What We See - Chapter 30

By Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 29: Over the next five months, Warren does good work without incident. Alan communicates frequently with Abby about his invention, and his prototype is taking shape. He also gives another computer programming class to his four students.

 

He begins planning a romantic trip to Saugatuck, Michigan, just for Ginnie and him and makes arrangements with Miss Ida to care for Tommy while they are gone, since he has become good friends with her grandson, Leroy.

 

Ginnie is thrilled with the idea of a trip together, and when they get there, Alan presents her with a ring and asks her to marry him. She says yes. 

 

 

Chapter 30

 

Christmas time, 1986

 

 

Ginnie and I got married in a small ceremony in early November. My parents and her mother were both gone, and she was estranged from her father, so we didn’t feel the need for a big, fancy wedding. We both invited a few close friends, and we exchanged wedding rings. 

We had a family discussion at dinner one night shortly after that, where we discussed my adopting Tommy. He was thrilled with the idea, and the next day I sent for the legal forms to petition for adoption. There was no length of marriage provision before adoptions were allowed in Indiana, but there were a few other requirements. Since there was no natural parent who would oppose the adoption, that made the process much easier. After a home visit by a social worker, we felt confident this would progress rapidly, and any day now, we expected word that it had been approved. Tommy was already calling me “Dad.”

 

 

 

Between Christmas and New Year, Abby St. Claire came for another visit with her relatives, and we agreed to get together one evening. I wanted the others to meet this young woman whom I’d been communicating with, so we invited her and Callie over for dinner one night.

She and Ginnie hit it off right away. I had explained to Ginnie beforehand that my relationship with Abby was strictly on a professional level. Yes, she was an attractive young woman, but she was almost ten years younger than me, and I had already found my ideal mate in life, and Ginnie had nothing to worry about. Besides, I told her, I could never go for a woman who wasn’t a baseball fan, and Abby had no interest in the game.

The five of us had a lovely dinner together. After dinner, we all went over to my store next door. I wanted to discuss a few things with Abby and show her my early prototype of the glasses. Ginnie has seen this demo several times and instead spent time with the kids while they demonstrated some of their programs to her on the computers at the front desk.

I said to Abby, “As you can see, it’s not nearly as small and compact as I’d eventually like it to be. I wanted to see if you had any ideas about further miniaturization of the camera. It’s kind of clunky.”

“This is a CCD camera, isn’t it? Did you give any consideration to using a CMOS camera? There may be greater potential for miniaturization with that technology, although I’m not certain if it’s available in the marketplace yet.”

“Well, I chose the CCD because of its supposed better image quality, but perhaps it doesn’t need to be the greatest, just as long as the written characters are recognizable to OCR software. I imagine the CCD’s ability to perform well in low light also may not be that important. Usually there’s quite enough light to read by.”

“Let me ask you this too. The text you are reading—there might be quite a lot of it on a large page. Can your camera take in the entire page at once, being a single-shot camera? I know that with CMOS, its sensors employ a rolling shutter mechanism where the pixels are exposed at slightly different times. Perhaps that’s what’s needed to be able to scan across a whole page of text by rolling the camera across it? I’m sure you could still do it with a CCD camera, but the programming would have to be quite complicated, I bet.”

“That’s an excellent point. I really hadn’t gotten that far yet to consider large pages. You’ve convinced me it would be worthwhile to take another look at CMOS. Whether or not it’s commercially available yet, I should still be able to fashion my own camera with it as long as I understand it.”

 “Worth a try anyway. Alan, I’m very impressed with the small size of your speaker. The sound is actually quite good for something this small. How did you manage it?”

“I read that just three or four years ago, they began experimenting with a neodymium permanent magnet inside the speaker. Because neodymium is such a powerful magnet, less of it is required to be used in a speaker, and it can be much smaller. I couldn’t get my hands on any miniature speakers because they aren’t commercially available yet that I could find, so I created my own, like I may have to do with the CMOS camera. The neodymium wasn’t so easy to get, but I was able to obtain a small amount. I’m sure I’ll eventually be able to miniaturize it even more when I’ve had a little more time to experiment with it, but for now, it seems good enough to prove the concept of the glasses.

“I just haven’t managed yet to have a chip built that is small enough for my 'computer' to manage everything. For now, at least, that has to remain a pocket device. And I also haven’t figured out the short-range wireless communication aspect.”

“Yeah, I believe that’s being worked on too, but it’s still a ways off. At any rate, this is a marvelous invention. A little more work, and you should patent it and beat whatever competition there might be for it.”

“Yep, I plan to.”

Ginnie wandered back and joined us then.

Abby said to her, “Your husband has something quite special here. I was just encouraging him to get a patent before long in case someone else might happen to be working on it.”

“Yes, that’s an excellent idea,” said Ginnie. “I don’t know that I fully trust his assistant, Warren. Tommy’s told me a few things about him that make him sound like a phony. I wouldn’t be all that surprised if he attempted somehow to get his hands on the design.”

“You know, Alan, I have a little experience being the victim of sabotage. Actual theft is not that different.”

She told us then about her junior project demonstration that turned into a fiasco.

“I think your fears about theft are valid ones, Abby,” said Ginnie. “I think you should definitely think about it, honey.”

Abby added, “If only you had a spy camera to use when he’s here by himself.”

“I’ve got a few of these miniature cameras, but even if I could rig one to take photos at, say, a five-minute interval, there is no way to store them for viewing later. That technology hasn’t been invented yet. Hmm... you know what? I've got something even better. When I managed the high school baseball team, I bought my own camcorder to film the kids hitting. We would look at the videotapes later and dissect their swings. I’ve still got that camcorder, and I’m sure I can figure out a way to hide it and turn it on when I’m going to be out. Abby, you’re brilliant!”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I was just thinking out loud.”

“Hey, girl, take credit where credit is due,” said Ginnie as she put her arm around Abby’s shoulders.

I said, “With two such persuasive women on my case, I would never hear the end of it if I didn’t do this, and something happened.”

“I’ll tell you the truth,” said Abby. “That guy kinda creeped me out when I met him last May.”

“That seems to be the general impression around here. But aside from that, he’s just never done anything to arouse any suspicion. The till has never been short, and he’s an excellent repairman. He’s also a pretty nice guy.”

“He’s nice when you’re around,” said Tommy, who must have overheard us talking about Warren, “but he’s not that nice when it’s just him and me. Most of the time, if I ask him something, he tells me not to bother him, but he sure seems to kiss up to you, Alan… I mean, Dad.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. You’re right, though. He does seem to be a bit of a brown-noser with me, always telling me what a great boss I am. Hey, Callie? You got anything else to pile on him?” Everyone chuckled.

“No, not really. Just that he pretty much ignores me.”

“Okay, you’ve all made a good case that I’d better take some steps to keep an eye on him. I know what it’s like, though, to be accused of something wrongly, so I’ve got to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t protect myself just in case.”

Abby thanked us for an entertaining evening then but said she and Callie had to get back. She had just one more day to spend with the family before heading back home again for a brief stay before the final semester of her senior year began.

We wished her well, and both Ginnie and I hugged her goodbye. She gathered up Callie, who also thanked us for a wonderful evening, and we told them we were very happy they came.

“I really liked her, Alan,” said Ginnie. “You can tell she’s very intelligent, but she’s modest about it—kinda like you in that regard. I think Callie is the same way.”

“Well, you’re right. She gave me a great idea about a new line of research too. And I guess I’d better start looking into what it takes to get a patent and setting up that spy camera. Busy times ahead.
 

Author Notes

I promise no more tech-speak after this. I thought we just needed to see the two nerds discussing things together to establish their bona fides for a bit of realism. CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University.

Chapter 35
What We See - Chapter 31

By Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 30: Alan and Ginnie get married, and Alan begins the process of adopting Tommy.

 

At Christmas time, he invites Callie and her cousin Abby, who is visiting, for dinner. Abby and Ginnie hit it off. After dinner, they go over to Alan’s shop, where he shows Abby his progress on the glasses. She gives him a suggestion on using a different camera that might enable it to be miniaturized further.

 

They all discuss how creepy Warren is, and Abby off-handedly suggests Alan set up a spy camera on him. Alan thinks of using his camcorder and vows to do it in case Warren gets any ideas about theft. He also plans to begin the process of getting a patent on his invention.

 

 

Chapter 31

 

 

Several weeks later, the certified copy of the adoption decree from the court arrived in the mail. When Ginnie and I got married, she had decided to take my name, Phelps, for her surname, and that’s what Tommy wanted to do too. We just needed to complete the application for amending his birth certificate and submit it, along with some other supporting documentation, to the Indiana State Department of Health, Vital Records Division. It was all done three weeks later, when we got his new birth certificate in the mail. Tommy Boardman is now Tommy Phelps.

We decided to celebrate this by going out to dinner and a movie. Tommy wanted to go to Mario’s in Grantham. The movie was going to be something special. At a little art theater in Grantham, they were showing the movie Das Boot in German with English subtitles. Tommy has been dying to try out the glasses in the real world. They weren’t quite ready for him to wear to school yet, but we all thought a good real-world tryout watching a foreign film with subtitles might be just the thing, and he was very excited about it. Plus, he likes war movies.

Dinner at Mario’s was wonderful as always. Before the meal came, Ginnie and I had a glass of wine, and Tommy had a Sprite. I toasted him: “To my son, Tommy, who has brought such joy to my life. You are a kindred spirit to me—that means we’re a lot alike—and if there are any more wicky stickets in our lives, we’ll all face them together. I love you, son.” I choked up as I said this, but apparently he did too.

He croaked out, “I love you too, Dad.”

“And I love you both,” added Ginnie, as we all clinked glasses.

 

 

 

Later, we arrived at the theater 10 minutes before showtime. It was a small theater, but amazingly crowded, which I didn’t expect. We had to sit quite close—in the second row—which meant we would have to move our heads from side to side a little to read the captions and take in the whole film.

This first prototype used a shutter release to start the filming of the words. I had taken Abby’s suggestion of using CMOS technology, which, if anyone is interested, stands for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, and its rolling shutter mechanism was just the thing for the side-to-side scanning that would be necessary since we were sitting so close to the screen. The little camera was mounted on the bridge of the glasses. Tommy would have to press the button on the computer in his pocket to begin the image capture and translation to voice, and it would recognize the end when there was no more text. He would have to remember to press the trigger each time a new caption was displayed, but he got the hang of it quickly. I hoped to be able to dispense with this trigger in future models and make it automatic, but that would come.

I glanced over at him from time to time during the movie, and he was entranced. He seemed to be understanding everything. It must have been a little disconcerting for him to hear the words spoken in the theater, as well as very close to his ears—the stems of the glasses containing the miniature speakers. It might have been confusing, but for the fact that the words were German and the translation was in English. He seemed to have adjusted to it readily.

On the way home in the car, he told us what it was like.

“Dad, I understood everything. I mean, I didn’t get all of it, but I understood what they were saying. It was a good movie.”

“I didn’t really get all of it either, Tommy,” said Ginnie. “That’s kind of the nature of foreign films with subtitles. They’re not always a perfect translation of the actual words being spoken, and sometimes the meaning gets a little lost in the translation. But as long as you could understand the translation of the written English words, that was the real test, and it sounds like you and the glasses passed with flying colors.”

“Dad, these are amazing. When can I start taking them to school?”

“Well, you can certainly use them at home, but before taking them to school, I think I need to get that patent first, and we would have to talk to your teachers about it too. I’ve just started researching what it will take to get a patent, and it’s not that straightforward. I may have to find a patent attorney to help me with it. Do you happen to know a good one?”

Ginnie and Tommy both laughed. She said, “Isn’t Callie’s dad a lawyer? I don’t think he’s a patent attorney, but maybe he could recommend one.”

“That’s a good idea. I think I’ll give him a call. Maybe he could, or at least he could let me know where to go about finding one.”

Tommy continued to wear the glasses the rest of the way home. He read street signs to us, storefront signs, and billboard signs we passed, sometimes to humorous results. The translation software had a bit of trouble pronouncing Dr. Ephraim Pszczolkowski on a billboard, and it correctly insisted on pronouncing Loser Street as Losser Street when we turned the last corner onto our street.

Tommy said, “Don’t these glasses know anything? It’s LOSER Street. For all us losers who live here.” We all laughed at that.

It had been a great evening—our first complete one as the Phelps family.

 

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University.

Chapter 36
What We See - Chapter 32

By Jim Wile

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of language.

Recap of Chapter 31: Alan, Ginnie, and Tommy officially become the Phelps family when Tommy’s name change is made to Phelps after his adoption by Alan. They decide to celebrate with a dinner out at Mario’s, followed by going to a foreign film with subtitles, where Tommy gets to hear the subtitles read to him by the glasses. All the way home he wears the glasses and hears them read the signs to him.

 

 

 

Chapter 32

 

Early March, 1987

 

 

The following evening, a Friday, I called Trent Lyons at home. After exchanging a few pleasantries, I said, “So, Trent, perhaps your niece, Abby, has told you that she and I have been corresponding about an invention I’m creating. She’s been a great help to me and is just a wonderful person. She reminds me a lot of your daughter, Callie, too.”

“Thanks very much, Alan. Both of them are quite special; I agree.”

“This invention is very near the point where I plan to seek a patent. I’ve been doing some research about the patenting process. It’s rather complex, and I think I need some legal help with it. I don’t know if I need a utility or a design patent or whether to start with a provisional or a full patent. Is this a field you are familiar with and could maybe help me with if I were to hire you?”

“This is one of several of the law’s most specialized areas—maritime law being another one. Practitioners of patent and infringement law usually have to enroll in the specialty and become certified in it. I wouldn’t take it on myself, but I could refer you to an excellent patent lawyer who I’m quite familiar with.”

“Well, that would be great.”

“Let me see, I think I’ve got his number… here.”

He gave me the number then for Harold Carmody, who practiced in Fort Wayne. I thanked him very much for his help, and we said goodbye.

 

 

 

On Monday morning, Warren came in at 10:00, which was an hour late. He looked a little more disheveled than usual. “Sorry I’m late, Alan. I had a rough night and didn’t get to sleep until 3:00 AM. I can make up the time this afternoon if you’d like.”

“That would be fine.” He didn’t look so good. “Is everything okay with you, Warren?”

“Things could be better. I’ve had a tough run of luck at the card table lately. But I won’t let this happen again—being late, that is. So, what’s in store for today?”

“I don’t mean to pry, but are you in financial trouble?”

“Nothing I can’t handle. Sure would be nice to start winning again, though.”

“Alright. I’ve got a couple work orders written up. There should be a UPS delivery this afternoon with some parts we’ve been waiting on. I’ve got notes to that effect on the computer. Why don’t you take a look at the new work orders for now, but give priority this afternoon to the jobs needing the parts that are coming.”

“Sounds good.”

He was familiar with the work order software on the computer and got to work looking up the new jobs.

 

 

 

At work on Thursday morning, I got a call from Warren at 9:00.

“Look, Alan, I’m sorry, but I won’t be in right away. I had a little accident and slipped while getting out of the shower this morning and hit my head against the vanity. I managed to blacken my eye, and I’ve got a bit of a headache now.”

“Jeez, Warren. Sorry to hear that. Maybe you should go to the emergency room and get yourself checked out for a possible concussion.”

“Yeah, I think I'll do that. If everything checks out okay, I’ll make up the hours tonight, if that’s alright with you.”

“Yeah, that would be fine, but only if they give you the okay to do that. Concussions can be dangerous, so listen to what they tell you to do."

“Got it. See you later, hopefully.”

“Alright. Take care of yourself.”

He’d seemed distracted all week, and he’d made a few mistakes in his work, which wasn’t like him at all. He was normally a jolly fellow with me and very reliable, but he was off his game, and something was eating at him. I wondered if he’d been lying about his financial situation and maybe was in the hole for a lot of money.

 

 

 

He came in at 1:00, and he definitely had a black eye, but otherwise he seemed okay. He said he'd been to the emergency room, but they found no signs of a concussion.

We worked for the rest of the afternoon, and at 5:30, I said, “It’s quitting time. Why don’t you forget about making up those hours right now, and you can do it next week? You should probably take it easy.”

“I’m really okay, Alan. I’d just as soon keep going and put in a full day. I’ll go get something to eat, but I’d like to put in the full eight hours today if you don’t mind.”

“Alright. Don’t kill yourself. If it gets to be too much, just leave. You gotta take care of yourself.”

“I will. I appreciate your concern, but I’ll be fine. I’d like to get this amplifier put back together since those parts came in today, so we can call the customer tomorrow. It’s already been a couple days longer than we’d promised, and I think he needs it for this weekend when his band has a gig.”

“Okay. Just lock up and turn the lights off when you leave. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

 

 

Perhaps I should have been, but I wasn’t particularly worried about leaving Warren alone there tonight. I had already taken some precautions and installed my camcorder in a well-hidden spot and turned it on before I left. If he were to try something, I would have it on videotape. Also, my filing cabinet had a lock on it, and I kept it locked up. And, my computer required a password to get into it, and nobody but Ginnie and I knew what it was. Finally, I would come over here at 8:00 to check things out under the pretense of getting something from my old upstairs bedroom.

Following dinner tonight, I spent some time with Tommy fine-tuning the glasses. He was using them regularly now to do his homework. This was actually the second pair I made, which used the CMOS camera. The original pair, which I kept locked up in the filing cabinet in my workroom, had the CCD camera in them. Although the camera hadn’t been as good as the CMOS camera, the speaker I’d made was a little better. This new one had a few distortion problems I hadn’t quite figured out yet, but with Tommy’s help, we were able to tweak it to remove some of the distortion. It still needed work, but the distortion was at least 50% better now.

He was writing an essay about Animal Farm, a book by George Orwell. He had read it using the glasses to help him for the first three-quarters of it, but we insisted that he read the last quarter on his own. At first, he complained about not being able to read the whole thing with the glasses, but we told him we wanted to make sure he didn’t become totally dependent on them but instead would use them to help him improve his reading. I told him it was important to read along as the voice read to him so that he would associate the written words with the sound of them and not to just zone out and listen. This seemed to be helping too, because he said he had an easier time reading the last quarter than he ever used to. We had him explain the story to us, and his comprehension was excellent. We were all very encouraged.

At 8:00, I excused myself to go next door and told him I’d be back shortly. When I got there, the door was locked, and the lights were off. Hmm, I thought Warren would still be here. I guess he must have left early, maybe because he wasn’t feeling so well after all. I went in anyway, just to check around. When I unlocked the front door and went inside, I had the immediate feeling that something was off. I wasn’t sure what it was, but something wasn’t right. Then I realized what it was. The computer fan was quiet. I usually left the machine on and only occasionally turned it off at night. After turning on the lights, I went to the computer, and my heart dropped. The monitor had been set aside, and the computer case had been opened up. I looked inside, and the hard drive was missing. Oh, shit!

I immediately went over to the filing cabinet and saw that one drawer was partially open. I studied the locking mechanism and could see that it had been jimmied. The files had been rifled through, and most of what pertained to the glasses that I’d kept well-disguised in the bottom drawer was now gone. And worst of all, the original pair of glasses, which I had kept hidden inside an old electric pencil sharpener box, were gone too.

Warren had known exactly what to steal—if it was him. Then again, maybe someone else had come in and taken the stuff after Warren had left. But the place hadn’t been broken into unless the front door lock had been picked. I had a sinking feeling that wasn’t it, so I decided to call his home to see if he was there. I did, but there was no answer.

Well, there was one sure way to find out whether or not it was him. Fortunately, he hadn’t discovered my hidden camcorder, which I pulled from its hiding place. I left everything else as it had been because I would be calling the police. Then I turned the lights off, locked up, and headed home, where I would look at the tape on the camcorder. I hated to say it, but I think all of our suspicions about Warren were probably accurate. I’ll know soon enough. Goddammit all. What a friggin’ disaster!

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Trent Lyons: Callie's father, who is a lawyer. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University.

Chapter 37
What We See - Chapter 33

By Jim Wile

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of language.

Recap of Chapter 32: Alan calls Callie’s attorney father to ask his advice about getting a patent for his invention. He is given the name of a patent attorney, with whom he makes an appointment.

 

Warren comes in to work an hour late the next day and says he didn’t get to bed until 3:00 AM and that he’s been losing at the poker table. Later in the week, he calls Alan, saying he won’t be in until 1:00 PM because he’d slipped coming out of the shower, banged his head, and blackened his eye. Alan urges him to go to the emergency room to be checked out for a concussion. When Warren comes in at 1:00, he asks Alan if he can work late that night to make up the hours. Alan agrees to it.

 

Before he leaves, Alan sets up the secret camcorder in case Warren tries anything. When Alan makes a surprise visit to the store at 8:00 PM, he finds out the hard disk was removed from the computer, and everything else relating to the glasses was stolen, including the original prototype. He suspects that Warren did it, and takes the hidden camcorder home to view it.

 

 

Chapter 33

 

 

Ginnie was in the living room reading when I returned home. I went in and sat next to her on the sofa. She immediately noticed the agonized look on my face and put her book down. “What's wrong?”

“Your fears were justified. Everything’s gone.”

“What do you mean? What’s gone?”

“The son-of-a-bitch stole the hard drive out of my computer. He jimmied the filing cabinet open and stole the files and the original pair of glasses. Everything pertinent to the invention is gone!”

“Oh, sweetie, no!”

“I mean, I haven’t lost everything. I back up my hard drive every week to an external hard drive I keep here, and I did it two days ago, so I haven’t lost all the plans and documentation. Plus, I’ve still got the newest pair of glasses, but a lot of the supporting material sent to me that I’d put in the filing cabinet is gone. This is bad, Ginnie. Do you know what he can do with everything he’s got?”

“What?”

“He could beat me to the punch in trying to patent it, or he could sell it to someone who could patent it. Then I’m screwed.”

“Even if you could prove it was stolen from you?”

“Well, maybe not. I don’t know about this kind of stuff. Now I’ve really got a need for that patent lawyer I’m seeing tomorrow.”

Tommy must have heard our voices, because he came downstairs and joined us in the living room. Seeing my expression, he said, “What happened, Dad?”

“Warren stole everything concerning the glasses. He even took the hard drive out of the computer. He didn’t find the hidden camcorder, though. Let me rewind the tape, and let’s see what it shows.”

We all huddled around the little screen as I began playing the tape. For the first few minutes, nothing unusual happened. We could see Warren had pulled a magazine from his backpack and was just sitting there reading. I guess he hadn’t planned on doing any work after all. I fast-forwarded the tape for a long time before we saw the action change. I slowed it back to normal speed, and we watched him go over to the computer, take the monitor off the top of the system unit and set it over to the side, then begin to open up the computer. We heard him whistling “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” while he worked. We watched him unscrew the brackets that held the hard drive in place and remove it. He placed it in his backpack, then turned his attention to the filing cabinet, which was also in the picture.

He had taken a screwdriver and a hammer with him and worked for a few minutes on jimmying the lock. We watched him go through the files, studying them for the pertinent ones. He finally found them in the bottom drawer, hidden beneath a few old magazines. Then he found the pencil sharpener box with the original prototype of the glasses inside, and we heard him mutter, “Oh, yes. Come to Poppa.”

He carried everything over to his backpack and stuffed it all inside. Apparently satisfied he had everything he needed, he moved out of the frame, which soon went dark, as he must have then turned the lights off and left. There was nothing more on the tape, which remained dark until it ended.

We just sat there for a minute, deflated, not saying anything. Watching something like that makes you feel incredibly violated. And now I had that damn “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” running through my head.

Then I began to burn, until finally I shouted, “Mother-fucker!”

“Cock-sucker!” Ginnie added.

I smiled, then we looked expectantly at Tommy as I beckoned him to add more with my hand.

“Stupid shithead!” he shouted, and we all began laughing.

When we finally quit, Ginnie said to Tommy, “I hope you don’t take that as permission to begin swearing now. This is—”

“I know, Mom. You don’t have to tell me that. It was kind of fun, though.”

She turned to me then. “Well, at least you have all your data backed up on your other hard drive, and you’ve still got the newer prototype, so it’s not the end of the world. And now you’ve got that tape to prove it was a theft.”

Tommy added, “See, Dad, it’s not such a wicky sticket after all.”

I smiled ruefully. “Thanks, guys. You’re both right.” I looked at Ginnie. “So, do you think I should call the police tonight, or can it wait until morning?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you should call them now, just to get it on the record, even if they don’t send someone out tonight. Then there’ll be no questions about why you waited so long after the discovery.”

“Yeah, good thought.”

During the call, I gave them all the pertinent info, including Warren’s name, address, and phone number. I told them I had video proof of the theft but that the threat was now over. They said they would send a detective out tomorrow afternoon.

 

 

 

I stewed about it the rest of the evening. As we were lying in bed, I said to Ginnie, “That suspicious nature of yours really paid off this time. That and Abby’s musing about setting up a spy camera. I mean, I had some doubts about the guy, but I never really thought he would stoop to this.”

“People aren’t always who they appear to be. I’ve sure learned that lesson. That guy is an enigma, though. I mean, he acts like this friendly, teddy bear kind of guy, but he’s got this creepy side too, especially with women.”

“Yeah, and he’s got a gambling problem, I’m pretty sure. He said he’s been losing at poker a lot lately, and that black eye he got this morning from a supposed slip in the shower? Makes me suspicious that maybe it was a collector of sorts, giving him a warning to pay up. Might have been a good incentive to steal my invention and sell it.”

“Make sure you mention all that to the detective.”

“Yeah, I will.”

“We’ll get through this, sweetie," she said, cuddling up to me. "You’ve got the proof he stole it. That’s got to count for a lot. And you haven’t really lost that much since you had it all backed up. It’s just a hassle, but we’ll manage it.”

“Nothing ever comes easy, does it?”

“Nothing worth fighting for, it seems. But we’ll fight it together. I love you.”

“I love you too. I’m glad I’ve got you with me. It will be a lot easier than going it alone. Just wish I could quit thinking about it now.”

“I know how to solve that.”

“You do, do you?”

“Yes.” And she succeeded.

 

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Trent Lyons: Callie's father, who is a lawyer. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University. Harold Carmody: A patent and infringement attorney.

Chapter 38
What We See - Chapter 34

By Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 33: Alan goes home after finding out that everything pertaining to his invention, including the hard drive from his computer, the physical files, and the first prototype of the actual glasses from the filing cabinet, has been stolen, and he tells Ginnie about it. She commiserates with him.

 

Tommy comes downstairs, and together they watch the videotape from the hidden camcorder, which has recorded the theft in its entirety. Alan is burning now and issues an expletive that both Ginnie and Tommy also add to. With the tension now broken, they realize that all is not lost because Alan has a routine backup on an external hard drive of all of his data, plus they have the newer prototype. They also have the video, which Alan can show the police, to document the theft. He decides to call them right away to report it.

 

 

 

Chapter 34

 

 

We arrived at the law offices of Carmody and Hayworth this morning at 9:00. Since Ginnie would be working nights this week, she was able to come with me to the meeting with the patent attorney.

Harold Carmody was a small, bookish-looking fellow of perhaps 60. His spacious office was one of old-fashioned elegance with dark wood paneling on the walls, a large, ornate mahogany desk in the middle of the floor, facing the door, and two comfortable armchairs facing the desk in front.

After introductions, he offered us a beverage, which we both declined, and sat behind his desk while we took the two chairs. “Now then, Mr. Phelps, it sounds like you’ve invented something for which you would like to receive a patent. Are you at all familiar with the process of obtaining a patent?”

“Please call me Alan, Mr. Carmody. I have done some reading about it, but I quickly got over my head, and I felt I needed legal advice. I believe this invention may be quite valuable. But here’s the thing: Something has come up since I made the appointment with you, which I think will be the first order of business before I seek a patent. The invention and all supporting documentation of it have been stolen by an employee who works for me.”

“Oh, good grief! I'm so sorry to hear that,” said Mr. Carmody, and he shook his head. “That’s an entirely different matter. Now we’re talking about intellectual property theft. Do you have proof of the theft.”

“Yes. I want to tell you two important things. First, I have a complete backup of most of what was stolen. He actually stole the hard drive out of my computer, but I make weekly backups of that, and I made a backup just a day before the theft. I also have a more advanced version of the stolen device in my possession and that I’ve brought today. Second, I have a videocassette of the theft produced by a camcorder I had secreted in my workroom. The tape clearly shows the theft in progress.”

“I have to say, you are the ideal client, Alan. It sounds as though you might have been anticipating something of this nature. Indeed, that’s an extremely fortunate preparation I have seldom seen from clients. In light of this, I think you should proceed immediately with filing a provisional patent application before the thief attempts to.

“And what if he manages to file first?”

“Then we can petition to have it overturned if we can prove that it had been stolen from you. But that’s subject to several things that I will get into with you later. May I ask what you plan to do with the device?”

“Yes, I was planning to sell the plans to a medical manufacturing company to manufacture it.”

“By selling them the patent or by licensing the usage rights?”

“Uh…”

“Alright, we can discuss that later. Could you show me the device and describe what it does?”

I did just that and also let him try it out himself.

“Alan, this is a very impressive invention, and if you choose to hire me to represent you, I think we should begin the application for a provisional patent immediately. It will make things much simpler if we can get you patent pending status first.”

“Mr. Carmody,” said Ginnie, “was the theft a civil or a criminal matter, and, if criminal, could we also bring a civil suit against the thief?”

“These are good questions, Mrs. Phelps, without simple answers. Generally, theft is considered a criminal offense, but unless restitution is made as part of the penalty, you could additionally sue the thief for damages in a civil suit. As a criminal offense, you must consider that the theft of the physical devices—the hard drive and the invention—may only amount to a misdemeanor because of the dollar value of the stolen physical property.

“What’s more important is the theft of the intellectual property, which is usually handled in a civil suit, as there was no direct interaction with the victim. An important consideration in this case, though, is that unless there is a patent, copyright, or trademark, the intellectual property is not legally protected. That may seem very unfair, but it’s difficult to win an intellectual property case without one of the means of legal protection in place.

“With all that said, however, it’s possible that your husband’s invention might qualify as a ‘trade secret,’ and as such, it may be protected under existing law. This would need to be explored further, though.”

Ginnie and I looked at each other and frowned. This may not be as straightforward as I’d hoped. “So, what would our next step be?”

“We would need to sign a representation agreement to give me the authority to act on your behalf, to lay out the fee structure, and to state your rights as a client. Would you like me to give the two of you a moment to discuss this before proceeding?”

“That would be fine. We’ll need just a couple of minutes, I should think.”

“Alright. I’m going to get a cup of coffee, and I will return in a few minutes.”

“What do you think of him?” I asked Ginnie after he stepped out.

“He seems very knowledgeable and professional to me. I actually understood what he said too.”

“Trent Lyons recommended him highly. Let’s give him the go-ahead to prepare the agreement. If it’s just too much money, we can reevaluate, but I have a feeling it would be money well spent.”

“I agree.”

Harold Carmody returned in a few minutes, and I gave him the go-ahead to prepare the representation agreement. He told us it was a standard form and would only take a few minutes for his secretary to prepare. In the meantime, I gave him some of the details about how the theft occurred and told him how I would be meeting with a detective this afternoon. He warned me that the police might not expend a great deal of effort on this because the dollar value of the hard drive and the prototype was not very large, and without a patent, intellectual property theft may be difficult to prove. It’s simply a fact that this type of theft isn’t treated the same as physical theft by the police.

There’s always the hope that I will get my patent application in before Warren does, and then there just isn’t much of a crime to worry about.

In a few more minutes, the secretary brought in the agreement to look over. The billed rates, though steep, were reasonable, I guess, and hopefully we wouldn’t need too many hours of his service. I glanced at Ginnie, who nodded. I signed the agreement then, and Harold Carmody officially became my attorney.

He also gave me the provisional patent application to fill out for submission to the US Patent and Trademark Office and asked me to overnight it to him so he could check it over for any revisions that may be necessary. Now it will be a race against the clock to get the patent application prepared quickly and submitted before Warren does. If I’m successful, this would stop any possible action on Warren’s part to take advantage of his theft.

 

 

 

Back home later that afternoon, a police detective came to the store. He inspected the computer and the filing cabinet which I had left undisturbed. I then provided him with Warren’s name, address, and contact information, the tape of the theft, and receipts for the hard drive and for many of the parts that were used in the prototype so that he could determine a value for the theft. As Mr. Carmody had warned me, this perhaps wouldn’t even amount to the threshold value for felony theft.

I also explained to the detective that I did not yet have a patent on the invention but that I had seen a lawyer just this morning and it was now in the works. He wrote all this down and took the originals of all the receipts and the videotape, which he promised to return to me when copies had been made.

He didn’t leave me with the impression this crime would be taken particularly seriously. I would still really like to get the stolen hard drive back. Although the drive itself isn’t worth much, the ideas on it potentially are. In addition to the glasses, there were a number of other ideas documented on the drive for other devices. They aren’t ready for patenting yet, though, and I didn’t want to take any chances that Warren could begin to develop them on his own. You can’t patent an idea; you must have something tangible to show that the idea is feasible. Things are very much up in the air right now.

 

 

 

That night, I began filling out the provisional patent application form Carmody had given me. The first thing was to come up with a name for the invention, which I had not done up to this point. They are glasses (or spectacles) that read text and talk to the wearer. I thought of calling them “Talking Textacles,” but I thought this would be too ripe for abuse. In the end, I called them “Text to Speech Readers.”

I also needed to provide the background for and summary of the invention, detailed drawings, and future plans for it that I would continue to work on, such as further miniaturization so they could be one self-contained unit.

Much of this I had already documented, so it was not difficult to pull it all together into one submission. Still, it took two days of burning the midnight oil to complete the application and mail it to Mr. Carmody to check over. Once he felt it was complete, he would submit it to the US Patent and Trademark Office for me.

 

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Trent Lyons: Callie's father, who is a lawyer. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University. Harold Carmody: A patent and infringement attorney.

Chapter 39
What We See - Chapter 35

By Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 34: Alan and Ginnie meet with Harold Carmody, the patent attorney, at his office. They inform him of the theft, and he discusses intellectual property theft with them, giving them the bad news that without a patent, there is little hope of winning an IP case. Alan hires Carmody to be his lawyer. Carmody also tells him the police are not liable to expend much effort on this theft, since the dollar value of the physical components stolen is not very great. Alan leaves with instructions to fill out the patent application quickly to try to beat Warren from profiting from the theft.

 

 

Chapter 35

 

 

Five days later, while at work, I got a call from Harold Carmody.

“Alan, before you file a provisional patent application, it’s necessary to do a patent search to see if the device has already been invented. This is part of the service I provide for you. My research of existing patents at the USPTO, that’s the US Patent and Trademark Office, did not turn up any such devices, so I then did a search for recent patent applications, and unfortunately, I found that a provisional patent application for this exact device has been made within the last week. It was not by your ex-employee, however, but by a company in Chicago by the name of Fraleigh Medical. Have you ever had any sort of contact with them before?”

“No, I haven’t. Do you think Warren Myers, the thief, may have sold the idea to them?”

“Probably, but that’s highly irregular. I’ve done some research on this company and have come to find out that they are a mid-size corporation with a very good reputation, until just recently, when there have been a couple of issues and lawsuits filed against them. Wilson Fraleigh is the founder of the company and president, and he has managed it very well in the 30 years since its founding. It’s grown substantially in that time.”

“So, are you thinking they may not have been aware of the theft?”

“They certainly should have suspected it if they did any kind of investigation or had their attorneys involved with the purchase. Something definitely sounds amiss here. I would not have expected this to happen with a company with a generally good reputation.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

“I suggest we schedule a meeting with Wilson Fraleigh to discuss this with him and find out the explanation for it. With your approval, I’ll call him right now to set it up.”

“What if he’s uncooperative? Do we threaten to take him to court?”

“That threat is always in the background, but I don’t think it will come to that. I think we should hold off making any threats until we have a better idea of what may have happened and how they gained the patent rights.”

“Alright. You’ve got my permission to make the call.”

“Stay on the line; I’ll make this a conference call.” He called the number he must have obtained for Wilson Fraleigh and spoke to his secretary, who was able to put him through after a minute or two.

“Mr. Fraleigh, my name is Harold Carmody. I’m a patent and infringement attorney in Fort Wayne. I have a client here, also on this call, who is the inventor of a device for which your company has just recently applied for a provisional patent. The device and all its specifications were stolen from him recently, and he believes the employee who stole the device may have sold it to your company.”

“What is the invention you are referring to?” asked Fraleigh.

“Hello, Mr. Fraleigh. Alan Phelps here. I’m the inventor of the device. It’s a pair of glasses that can be used by dyslexics as well as the blind to see written text, convert it into speech, and play it for the wearer to hear.”

“Hmm, I’m not familiar with this device. This is actually my first day back after a month-long recuperation from some major surgery, during which I had little contact with the company. You say the device was stolen from you and sold to us, and we applied for a patent? That seems very unusual. In most cases, we purchase the rights from the patent holder to manufacture whatever device the patent is for. It’s rare that we receive a device in this way and seek the patent ourselves.”

Carmody said, “Yet that is what happened in this case, Mr. Fraleigh. We have videotaped proof of the theft. We would very much like to set up a meeting with you at your earliest convenience to discuss the matter further and see if we can come to some sort of agreement about how to proceed.”

“That would be fine, gentlemen. Let me transfer you back to my secretary, who can set this up with you. In the meantime, I will do my darndest to get to the bottom of what happened here.”

We made arrangements with his secretary for a meeting on Monday (this was Thursday).

I thanked Mr. Carmody for setting this up, and he told me what I should bring to the meeting on Monday, which included my newer version of the invention, notes and drawings of it, and both the proof that Warren Meyers had been my employee and the videotape I had of the theft.

I had been back and forth with him a couple of times already with revisions of the patent request, and he urged me to send him my final set of revisions as soon as possible so he could submit them to the USPTO for approval. This would establish an early filing date for the eventual full patent. Presumably then, if we can get Fraleigh Medical to withdraw their application for the provisional patent, we would be the first one in line to be able to receive a full patent as long as we file it within a year of the provisional.

 

 

 

 

I continued to work until quitting time. When I went home, Ginnie was there, and she could tell something was wrong.

“Sweetie, what is it? You look a little down.”

“Bad news. Mr. Carmody found out that a patent application has already been filed for my invention, just this past week. My exact invention. But it wasn’t Warren who filed it. It was some medical manufacturing company in Chicago. We’re guessing the weasel sold the whole package to the company for a quick sum of money—probably for far less than it’s worth—just so he could pay off whatever gangsters were after him.” I told her the rest and how we had a meeting scheduled with the company’s president on Monday to figure out what happened.

“That damn Warren,” she said and put her arms around me. “Carmody did say there were things we could do, though, if that company refused to cooperate, right?”

“Yeah, he mentioned something about this being a trade secret, and perhaps we could get that patent squashed on theft of intellectual property. That may be it, though.”

“Well, let’s try not to worry too much until you have that meeting on Monday.”

“Easier said, than done. It just seems so unfair. I mean, I’ve got proof that the invention was stolen for God’s sake. Doesn’t that count for anything? I just don’t get why there isn’t legal protection in a clear-cut case of theft like this.”

“Me neither.”

Tommy came into the house right then. I didn’t really feel like getting into it with him right now.

“Hey, Bud. Wanna go out and have a catch while Mom gets dinner started?”

“Sure, Dad.”

“I’ll be in later to help you with dinner,” I said to Ginnie.

“I’ve got it. Just have fun with your son.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Tommy retrieved our mitts and a baseball, and we went out into the backyard to have a catch. Archie was prowling around out there, and he came up to join us. We petted him for a while, then started throwing the ball back and forth.

“So, how has English class been lately? Has Mrs. Dunbar been cutting you any slack?”

“She actually has. She let me come in after school on our last test to finish it, because I hadn’t finished it in class. She gave me an extra half hour. I got a B-minus on the test, and I’ve managed to pull my grade up to a C. She hasn’t embarrassed me in front of the class since that time a while ago either.”

“That’s great. I guess your mom and I made an impression, and she understands a little more now. It’s hard to see things in a different light, but I think that was a wake-up call for her. And they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

“Well, you can’t teach a young cat new tricks; that’s for sure. I’ve tried to teach Archie to sit and to roll over, but he just looks at me or walks away.”

“Yeah, they won’t do anything that isn’t their idea. Pick a cat up, and put him on your lap, and they’ll jump right down. But when they feel like being on your lap, they’ll jump up there no matter what you’re doing—whether you’re sitting at the computer or watching TV or—”

“Or sitting on the toilet!”

“He’s never done that to me. Why, has he done that to you?”

“Sure. All the time. He likes the smell.” He busted up then.

“Ah, go on!” I laughed. “You’re making stuff up.”

He was laughing so hard, we had to stop throwing for a while.

Ginnie poked her head out the back door then and said, “Alright, you two. Ten more minutes, then come in and wash your hands.”

I have to say, he helped get me out of my funk.

We resumed our catch. “Hey, Tommy. Are you planning to go out for Junior League Baseball this year? You’re old enough now. I believe they’ll be holding tryouts next month.”

“Yeah, I’d like to.”

“You know, I’m sure I’ve told you I used to be the baseball coach at Grove Park High School. I was thinking of volunteering for a coaching job. What would you think about that?”

“That would be great, Dad. I’d love to be on your team.”

“I think I’ll apply then.”

“Do you miss coaching the high school team?”

“Yeah, kind of. That’s why I’d like to coach again. I think I can teach the kids a lot about the game. I’ve always liked teaching, you know. I kind of miss that too.”

“Yeah, you’re really good at it.”

“Well, thanks.”

After a few more minutes, I said, “We should probably go in now.”

When we got inside, Ginnie asked, “What were you guys yucking it up about out there?”

“Believe me, you don’t want to know,” I said, going over to the sink to wash my hands.

 

 

(The story is 85% complete.)

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Trent Lyons: Callie's father, who is a lawyer. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University. Harold Carmody: A patent and infringement attorney. Wilson Fraleigh: The owner and president of the company that bought the patent from Warren.

Chapter 40
What We See - Chapter 36

By Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 35: A patent search by Harold Carmody, the patent lawyer, reveals that a provisional patent application has already been made by a medical equipment company. Apparently, Warren sold the invention and data to this company to make a quick buck. In a phone call to Fraleigh Medical, the president, Wilson Fraleigh, reveals that he has just returned to work after a long absence and knew nothing about this sale, but he promises to look into it and consents to having a meeting about it with Alan and Carmody in a few days.

 

Alan lets Ginnie know about this and she encourages him not to despair. Alan is able to get his mind off it by immersing himself in his family life.

 

 

 

Chapter 36

 

Monday morning at 9:30, I arrived at Fraleigh Medical, located in University Park, just south of Chicago. It is a modern building in an office park, well away from the city proper. Mr. Carmody was waiting for me in the entrance lobby, and he let the receptionist know we were both here now. She called Wilson Fraleigh’s office to alert them and showed us the way to his office.

Fraleigh was there to greet us when we arrived. He was a tall man, perhaps 65 years old, but very thin and pallid-looking. We made our introductions, and he showed us into his office and asked us if we’d like some coffee, to which we both responded yes. He asked his secretary to bring it in when it was ready and closed the door.

His office was large and spacious, and we took seats at a small conference table. Fraleigh began by giving us a brief history of the company he had built and highlighting some of the products they had manufactured. He seemed very proud of his company. His face then took on a somber look, and he hesitated a few seconds before going on.

“Gentlemen, I’ve had a chance to find out the circumstances of our recent acquisition of this invention, and I must tell you that what I discovered was very disconcerting to me. Did you happen to bring the videotape you recorded of the theft?”

I had placed everything in a briefcase, removed the camcorder, and played the tape for him.

Fraleigh said, “Yes, this is the same man who was on the security footage from when he came in to sell us the device and the documentation that he brought on diskettes. I haven’t had a chance to look at all the data, but his name is on what I did see.”

“I’m sure he went into the files and changed them where he could. I make weekly backups of the hard drive that he stole, so I have all the electronic documentation he gave you, and I assure you, it is my name on all the documentation. I have the newer version of the prototype as well.”

“I don’t doubt you, Mr. Phelps. You seem to have taken great precautions against such an event as this theft. Still, would you mind showing me some of the documentation with your name on it?”

I reached into the briefcase and pulled out a file folder containing hard copies of both notes and drawings that I had printed out, clearly showing my name on them. I also brought out the newer model of the glasses and put everything on the table for him to see.

After perusing the hard copies, he picked up the glasses and inspected them. “This looks a little different from the device we acquired.”

“Yes, this one uses a CMOS camera mounted here above the bridge, while the other one uses a CCD camera. The CMOS camera allows for a wider page to scan with much easier programming.”

He nodded, then put the glasses back on the table and glanced through the notes and drawings I’d provided. “Not that it matters a great deal, but just for completeness, can you verify that this man was indeed in your employ at the time of the theft?”

“Yes, I have that too,” I said as I reached into the briefcase and brought out a copy of the last payroll record I’d printed out.

He studied this for a moment. “This is a different name than the one he used on the documentation I saw. That was most likely an alias. It’s a good thing you had the video proof of his theft, or I might not have known who was telling the truth here, although I would have strongly suspected it was you. I’m just curious; was he a good employee?”

“He was, but he had a gambling problem. He was a poker player, and my guess was that he was deeply in debt and needed the money quickly. He was not himself the last week of his employment and came in with a black eye one day, claiming it was due to a slip in the shower. I suspect he’d been visited by the person he owed the money to.”

“This is all making sense now. Let me tell you what happened at this end and what I plan to do about it. As I told you over the phone, I have been off for the past four or five weeks having and recuperating from heart surgery. I had been largely incommunicado during that time, on the advice of my doctor. Unbeknownst to me, Meyers approached us over a week ago with the device and data. My brother-in-law, who has been working here for about a year as a junior vice-president, was the one to meet with him.”

He paused then, with a grim look on his face and a slight shake of the head. “The bottom line is that my brother-in-law bought the device and data from Meyers for a sum of $100,000. That was an excellent deal on our part. I can’t fault his acumen for recognizing a winner and buying it cheaply, but I can certainly find fault with his judgment and tactics. He did not consult with our attorney on this matter but just wrote Meyers a check for the amount in exchange for the device and data. This was highly irregular but seems to follow a pattern of poor judgment on his part that has led to a few major problems in the past year. I assure you; this will be dealt with in very short order.”

“And the patent application that your company has made?” put in Carmody.

“I will personally withdraw that application today so that you may become first in line when you file yours, Mr. Phelps.”

I smiled broadly.

Carmody said, “We are very happy to hear that, Mr. Fraleigh. That, indeed, was the result we were hoping for, and that is very honorable of you.”

“Thank you. I don’t believe in conducting business in this way, and I apologize for the grief this must have caused you, Mr. Phelps. That being said, this is a wonderful invention, and I would very much like to manufacture it if you could see it your way to let us bid on it. Are you interested in selling the patent once you get it, or were you thinking about a license agreement? We would be happy to accommodate either option.”

Carmody said, “We haven’t gotten that far in our discussions yet, and we will be exploring both options.”

“To show you my sincere regret about what happened, I would be prepared to make you a very good offer whichever way you decide to go. I sincerely hope you will consider us.”

 

“I appreciate that, Mr. Fraleigh,” I said. “Is there anything else you’d like to discuss?”

“I can’t think of anything. I will be sure to notify you, Mr. Carmody, as soon as the provisional patent application has been withdrawn. I will initiate proceedings to do that today.”

 

“Thank you,” said Carmody. “We very much appreciate your honesty and your attempts to rectify this situation.”

 

“You’re welcome. That’s just not the way I like to do business. Our reputation has taken a few hits lately, and another lawsuit would have been very unwelcome. As I said, I will be handling the reason for that immediately. I apologize again for what has happened and hope to be able to make it up to you in the future.”

 

 

 

On the way out to the parking lot, Carmody said to me, “Well, Alan, I don’t think we could have asked for a better result than this. I would advise you now to complete your final modifications to the application for the provisional patent and overnight it to me so that I may check it over a final time. The sooner we can get this off to the USPTO, the less you have to worry about being preempted. You’ll then have a year to complete the full patent application. Then we can decide the next step, which will either be to sell the patent or to make a license agreement whereby you would keep the patent rights but earn royalties instead. We can discuss pros and cons later.”

We shook hands and said goodbye after he assured me that he would let me know when Fraleigh had withdrawn their application.

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Trent Lyons: Callie's father, who is a lawyer. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University. Harold Carmody: A patent and infringement attorney. Wilson Fraleigh: The owner and president of the company that bought the patent from Warren.

Chapter 41
What We See - Chapter 37

By Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 36: Alan and his patent lawyer, Harold Carmody, pay a visit to Wilson Fraleigh of Fraleigh Medical, who filed the patent application first after Warren had sold the stolen device and notes to Wilson Fraleigh’s brother-in-law, a vice president of the company. Wilson Fraleigh had not known of the sale because he had been on a medical leave of absence.

 

Alan has brought proof that he was the inventor of the device as well as the videotape of the theft, which he shows to Fraleigh. To avoid a lawsuit and to express goodwill because he would like to manufacture the device, Fraleigh decides he will revoke their patent application and vows to fire his brother-in-law, who has demonstrated poor judgment and unscrupulous ways other times as well. He also promises Alan a good deal if he would consider Fraleigh Medical for manufacture of the device. Alan and Carmody are greatly pleased by this turn of events.

 

 

 

Chapter 37

 

 

When I got home after work today, Ginnie’s car was in the carport, but she wasn’t downstairs. She was probably upstairs, changing out of her scrubs. Tommy and Callie Lyons were in his room together, supposedly studying, but I think they spent most of their time playing games on his computer. We did insist that his bedroom door remain open when Callie was here. I peeked in and said hi, then went to find Ginnie to tell her the good news.

“Well?” she said when she saw me.

She was only half-dressed at the time. I went over, grabbed her, and swung her around.

“You’re in a frisky mood. Must be good news, huh?”

I went to put her down then, but she grabbed on with her legs around my waist and wouldn’t let go. “The best! Fraleigh agreed to withdraw his patent application without a fight. In fact, he was very apologetic that it had come to this, and it sounds like he’ll be firing the guy who was responsible. Said it was his brother-in-law.”

“Ooo, that may not go over so well with his wife.”

“Sure sounds like the guy deserves it, though. Sounds like he’s a screwup and just lost the company 100 grand to Warren.”

“Oh, I’m so happy for you, sweetie.” She laid a big smooch on me then and finally let go with her legs.

I didn’t let her go, though, and smooched her again. “How about we go out for dinner tonight and celebrate. Maybe Tommy will want to invite Callie to go with us. What about some Mexican at Chico’s?”

“Sounds good. Didn’t feel like cooking tonight anyway. Why don’t you go tell Tommy and see if Callie wants to come too, and I’ll finish getting dressed?”

“How about a few more smooches first?” I said, as I kissed her again.

“Mmm. Let’s save that ‘til later tonight, okay?” as she fended me off. “Now go ask your son and his girlfriend.”

 

 

 

We’d had a fun time at dinner last night at Chico’s, where we celebrated the good news from yesterday. I didn’t mind sharing it with Callie, who went with us. She was quite impressed by the invention, which I brought with us. Tommy used it to read the menu, and Callie gave it a try too. We all got a good laugh as it pronounced everything with an Americanized accent. Thus, Camarones Guajillo came out as Cama-roans Gua-jillow, and quesadilla came out as qwezza-dilla. It was apparent the speech synthesizer needed a little work.

This morning, the first order of business was to complete the provisional patent application form that Mr. Carmody had provided me.

It had taken a couple of back-and-forths with him to cover all the bases. He understood the need for speed, so he was very prompt with his revision recommendations, as was I with the necessary revisions. I completed the final modifications and overnighted them to him.

 

 

 

He called the following day to tell me he had received them, checked them over a final time, and sent them in to the patent office. Now it would be a waiting game for this application to be approved. It could take up to six months, but at least I now have the earliest known date of the invention on the books. Even if someone else were to seek another patent request for an equivalent device, mine would be the one granted because it was first in line. I could finally relax.

But not totally. I still wanted to get the hard drive back that Warren had stolen because there were a number of other ideas documented on it in separate directories from the ones for the glasses.

For example, there was one for short-distance wireless communications, which I had contemplated adding to the glasses should it prove impossible to make a sufficiently miniaturized version of the “computer” where all the processing would take place. I didn’t want to have to run wires from the glasses to the computer held in the user’s pocket, as happens now, and would rather the communications between devices be wireless. Such technology didn’t exist yet, so I had preliminary plans for building it. It was nowhere near patentable, though. There were several other devices in early development documented on that hard drive too, and I wanted to put an end, once and for all, to Warren's ability to profit from my ideas.

I don’t know which is worse: people blaming me for things I didn’t do or people taking credit for things I did, but I’ve had enough of both. I’m determined now never to let either one happen again.

Once I get the full patent for the glasses, I’m going to go after the best deal I can for their manufacture because I know it works and it will help a lot of people. And in the process, I should make good money from it. And so I don’t have to go through this hassle again, I’m going to get that hard drive back and nail the son-of-a-bitch for his theft. But how to find him?

I didn’t have much to go on. He didn’t answer the phone at his place in Grantham, so maybe he had moved back to Fort Wayne, where he said he had worked previously. Perhaps he had family there.

 

Only one way to find out: I made a trip there the next day and stopped at a service station where I’d seen a phone booth. There was a phone book in there, and I looked for the name Meyers. Fort Wayne has a population of almost 250,000 and, to my dismay, there were tons of Meyerses in the phone book.

Then I had another thought. I remember he’d said his old boss had retired and was trying to sell his shop by the same name. Maybe he was still here. What was that name? It was a composer’s name, but I couldn’t remember which one right away.  It wasn’t a very familiar one, like Mozart or Handel; I know that much. Mussorgsky perhaps? No, Sibelius? Then it came to me: Dvorak. New World Symphony. That was it. Much less common. I looked it up, and there were only six in the book. I could handle that.

I called each one, asking if they had owned an electrical repair shop that was now closed. I struck paydirt on the fourth one. Samuel Dvorak had owned the shop and was wondering if I was interested in buying it.

“Uh, no, Mr. Dvorak. The reason I’m calling is because I’m trying to locate a former employee of yours, Warren Myers.”

“Yes, Warren worked for me for several years. Good worker too.”

“He worked for me too at my store in Mason for several months. I believe he got into some trouble and never showed up one day, and I’ve lost touch with him. He doesn’t respond to my phone calls, and I was wondering if you had some sort of home address for him here in Fort Wayne when he worked for you? Or perhaps you know of a relative who lives here who might know where he is.”

“I believe he lived with his mother, if I remember correctly. Let me see if I’ve got her address. Hold on just a moment.”

That was perfect. If anyone knew where he was, it would probably be his mother. Dvorak returned to the phone in a couple of minutes and said, “Yeah, I found his address. It was 421 Alpha Street.”

“Would you happen to know his mother’s name, Mr. Dvorak?”

“He might have mentioned it once or twice, but I don’t remember it.”

“That’s okay. If she’s in the phone book, I should be able to find her number. Thank you very much for this. I appreciate it.”

“Hope you find him. Good fellow, although he seemed to have a bit of a gambling problem, truth be told.”

“Alright, then. Thanks again.”

Once more, I looked through the Meyerses, hoping to find an address on Alpha Street. Sure enough, there was an Elizabeth Meyers who lived at 421 Alpha Street. I called the number. It rang about ten times before it was answered.”

“What do you want?” came the response from a raspy female voice.

“Is this Elizabeth Meyers?”

“Who wants to know?”

“My name is Nathan Caldwell. I’ve been trying to get ahold of your son, Warren, for a while now with no success. Have you spoken to him lately, and do you know where he might be?”

“I have no friggin’ idea where the bum is. Is this some card shark he owes money to? Skipped out on his debts again, huh?”

“No, ma’am. I’m the pastor at his church in Grantham. I’m worried about him and wondering where he is.”

“Son-of-a-bitch got religion now, huh? Well, the big turd stole money from me to pay off someone or other he got in trouble with, and he up and left me high and dry months ago. I don’t know or care where he is now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Does he have any other relatives who might know where he is?”

“He’s got a good-for-nothin’ brother lives down in Arkansas. Two of a kind. Both no good.”

“Do you have a name and phone number for him by any chance?”

“Name’s Dennis, but I don’t have no phone number for him. Never calls me, and I don’t call him neither.”

“Do you know where in Arkansas he lives?”

“Just outside Little Rock in a podunk town called Macon.”

“Do you think he might have gone there?”

“Have no friggin’ idea. What you want him for anyway? He owe you money too?”

“No ma’am. He’s been coming to Bible study regularly, and he just stopped coming. I’ve been trying to call him to ask him why, but he doesn’t answer at the number I have for him.”

“Well, he prob’ly skipped town like he done before when he gets in debt. If you find him, tell him his ma says, ‘Go to hell.’”

“Alright Mrs. Meyers. Thanks for your help.”

Well, at least I discovered where he might have gone. I think I’ll discuss this with Ginnie before deciding what to do with this information. I got in my car and headed home.

 

 

(5 more chapters to go)

 

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Trent Lyons: Callie's father, who is a lawyer. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University. Harold Carmody: A patent and infringement attorney. Wilson Fraleigh: The owner and president of the company that bought the patent from Warren. Samuel Dvorak: Warren's former employer. Elizabeth Meyers: Warren's mother. Dennis Meyers: Warren's brother.

Chapter 42
What We See - Chapter 38

By Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 37: Alan gives the family the good news that Fraleigh will be rescinding their patent application, and they celebrate with a night out at Chico’s. The next day, Alan completes his final draft of the patent application and sends it off to Carmody to submit.

 

Alan still wants to get the hard drive back from Warren because of the other invention ideas on it; he doesn’t want Warren to capitalize on any of them either. He begins a search for Warren, which takes him to Fort Wayne, where Warren was previously employed, and he finds out from Warren’s mother that it’s possible he went to live with his brother in Arkansas.

 

 

 

Chapter 38

 

 

I got back to the store just past noon. There was a caller on the answering machine who said he was applying for the assistant’s job I’d been advertising in the want ads. We made arrangements for him to come in later for an interview. I had previously interviewed a few others for the job—none of whom were qualified—and I was hoping he would be the one, since I now had a rather large backlog of work.

I dove into it and worked steadily until 3:00, when the fellow showed up for the interview. He’s an older gentleman, probably mid-50s, named Andrew Olafsen. He’d been laid off from US Steel in Gary as part of their recent downsizing. He’d been both an electrician and mechanic there, but he said he’s been having a tough time lately finding work at his age. He doesn’t know that much about appliance repair, he told me, but has good practical knowledge of electricity and electrical systems.

I had a sewing machine that had just been brought in and was no longer working, so I asked him how he would go about diagnosing and fixing it. He asked if he could open it up and take a look inside. I watched him do this, and he was able to diagnose the problem correctly. He demonstrated a ready knowledge of the different electrical components and asked me if he could repair it. I watched him as he did so, discussing what he was doing at each step with him. He even took the initiative of cleaning it up after the repair was complete, wiping off all smudges and fingerprints from the casing. It was an impressive performance, and I told him I would check the references he provided me, and I would let him know very soon.

 

 

 

This evening, while Ginnie and I prepared dinner together, I told her about my investigative adventure this morning and how I now had a possible location for Warren.

“The problem is,” I told her, “if I find out Dennis Meyers’s number through information and call him, I can’t just ask if his brother is there. He would just lie and say he hasn’t seen him if he happens to be there. So, what could I do to trick him into revealing the truth if it happens that he’s there?”

Ginnie thought for a moment. “Knowing his propensity for gawking at good-looking women, like moi for example, I’ve got an idea. Would you recognize Warren’s voice if he were to answer?”

“Pretty sure I could.”

“Alright then, if it’s his brother, Dennis, who answers instead, hand me the phone and, in a sexy voice, I’ll say I’m responding to Warren’s 900 call in which he asked to buy a set of my pictures, and I was just calling to ask which particular set he wanted because he didn’t specify. Depending on his response, we should be able to tell whether or not he’s there. What do you think?”

“That’s brilliant! I knew you’d come up with something good. What’s your name going to be for this babe you'll be impersonating?”

“Umm… how about Desiree Love?”

“Perfect. When do you want to do this?”

“What’s wrong with right now?”

“What’ll you say if he puts him on the phone?”

“I don’t know. I’ll improvise. I’ll tell him it was a gift from someone. This will be fun.”

“Okay, then. Let's do it.” I called 411 then and got a phone number in Macon, Arkansas for Dennis Meyers, who lives at 22 Rucker St., which I jotted down. I dialed the number she gave me, and a deep voice answered. It wasn’t Warren. I quickly handed the phone to Ginnie, who said in a very sultry voice with a southern drawl, “Hello, Sugar. This is Desiree Love callin’. Is this Warren Meyers ah’m speakin’ with?”

“No.”

“Well, who are you, sweetie?”

“Ah’m his brother Dennis.”

“Well, is Warren there, Dennis honey? He called me recently for some pictures of me that ah think you’ll both enjoy, but ah need to know which set to send him because he didn’t specify. Ah’ve got five different sets with different prices dependin’ on how revealin’ they are. Would he happen to be there so ah could ask him?”

“Naw, he’s at work now. He won’t be home for ‘bout an hour. Can he call ya back, Desiree?”

“That’d be fine, sweetie. Ma number is (900) 555-2217. Did’ja write that down?”

“I got it. Ah’ll have ‘im call ya.”

“Alright, Darlin’. Hope you enjoy those pictures, and you take care now. Buh-bye.”

“Oh, that was great!” I said to Ginnie. “You're an impressive woman. Can I see some of those picture sets you’ve got?”

She punched me playfully in the arm as we both laughed. “Well, I think you’ve got your answer. Now what are you going to do with that information? Call the cops?”

“No. I think I’ve got to go down there to get my hard drive back.”

“Why? You’ve already got all the information on your backup copy.”

“There are a number of other valuable ideas on there that I don’t want him profiting from the way he did on the glasses. I don’t want to go through the hassles again.”

 

“But what if he’s armed, plus there’s two of them against only one of you? This could be very dangerous. I really wish you wouldn’t go.”

“I’m not going to do anything stupid. If I see that it’s going to be too risky, I’ll just turn around and come home. But I’ve got to try.”

“You’re really determined to do this, even though I ask you not to?”

“I am, but I promise you I’ll be careful, and at the first sign of danger, I’ll leave.”

“When were you thinking of going?”

“Today’s Thursday. I think I’ll leave real early Saturday morning. It’s got to be at least a 10-hour drive down there. If everything goes well, I should be home again by Sunday night.”

“Just please be careful. I’m going to worry about you the whole time.”

“Ah’ll be fahn, Darlin’. Don’tchu worry that pretty li’l head a yours.”

She smiled ruefully and gave me a hug.

 

 

 

(4 more chapters to go)

 

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Trent Lyons: Callie's father, who is a lawyer. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University. Harold Carmody: A patent and infringement attorney. Wilson Fraleigh: The owner and president of the company that bought the patent from Warren. Samuel Dvorak: Warren's former employer. Elizabeth Meyers: Warren's mother. Dennis Meyers: Warren's brother.

Chapter 43
What We See - Chapter 39

By Jim Wile

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of language.

Recap of Chapter 38: Alan interviews a new assistant who gives an impressive performance of his skills. He will most likely hire him after checking his references.

 

At home that evening, he tells Ginnie that he found out Warren might be at his brother’s house in Arkansas. Ginnie devises a plan to see if he’s there and finds out that indeed he is, in a phone conversation with his brother in which she impersonates a porn star. Though she tries to talk him out of it, Alan tells her he’s determined to go down to Arkansas and get his hard drive back.

 

 

Chapter 39

 

 

This morning, I called the references Andrew Olafsen had given me. Both his previous supervisor and his landlord spoke very positively about him. I called him up and told him he had the job, and he agreed to come to work at 9:00 next Wednesday. He was a godsend because I have fallen quite far behind at work without an assistant.

I worked until 3:00 today, when I closed up shop. I had a few errands to run before the trip tomorrow. The first stop was a firearms store in Grantham, where I purchased a blank gun and some blanks. A blank gun looks and sounds close enough to a real pistol that it should pose a threat if needed. I have never owned or fired a real gun before and didn’t relish the thought of actually shooting someone. I’m hoping, should the need arise, that just the threat of a gun will be enough to accomplish my goal of getting the hard drive back.

I also got an oil change and gassed up the car to prepare for the long car ride tomorrow.

 

 

 

It was 6:00 AM on Saturday morning when I left for Arkansas. Ginnie had gotten up with me and made me breakfast while I packed a small suitcase. If all went well, I planned to spend only one night there in Arkansas before heading back home tomorrow.

After breakfast, I hugged and kissed her goodbye, and she wished me luck, reminding me again to be careful. I looked in on Tommy, but he was still asleep.

I took US 31 to Indianapolis, where I picked up I-70 and then I-57, which took me most of the way to Arkansas. From there, it was US highways down to Macon. I arrived at 4:30 PM and checked into a motel, where I picked up a local map of the area and located Rucker St. I called Ginnie before heading out.

“Hi, sweetie. Just wanted to let you know I got here safely. I’m planning on heading out to Dennis Meyers’s house now.”

“Alan, you’re going to be very careful, right? What exactly is your plan anyway?”

“I’m just going to play it by ear. I won’t really know ‘til I get there and see the lay of the land. I’m not even sure he’ll be there or his brother or just what. But yes, I’ll be careful.”

“You don’t know what you’re getting into, so please, please be careful, and don’t do anything rash. If it looks like it might be going bad, just get out of there and forget about it. Will you do that?”

“I will. I promise.”

“Alright then. I love you.”

“I love you too. I’ll call you again tonight.”

I got in the car and followed the map to Rucker St. It was really out in the sticks, and the houses were few and far between. It took me a while to find number 22. I drove past number 10, then passed a ramshackle house with no number on the mailbox along the road. I wasn’t sure it was even inhabited by the looks of it. Next, I came to 38. I figured 22 must have been the one with no number. I turned around and drove back, parking along the far side of the road about ¼ mile from the two-track that served as the drive up to the house. I pulled the loaded blank gun from the glove box, then turned and opened the car door.

Before stepping out, I tucked the blank gun in the waistband at the rear of my jeans and pulled my T-shirt down over it. Then I got out and began walking toward number 22.

I walked about 10 steps when I heard a voice behind me say, “Hello there, Alan.”

I turned around and saw Warren standing there, holding a rifle pointed at me. Where the hell did he come from?

“So, what brings you to lovely Macon, Arkansas, Alan?”

“I came for one thing, and I know you’ve got it.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t try to deny it. I’ve got a videotape of you stealing the hard drive out of my computer. Also of you breaking into my filing cabinet.”

“So, you were spying on me, huh?”

“Yep, and the police are in possession of that tape now. You’re a wanted felon, Warren.”

“Oh, I hardly think so. All the things I took aren’t worth a whole lot unless you consider their potential worth, but I think you’d have trouble convincing the cops to care about that in light of the fact that you don’t have a patent on your little invention.”

“I know about your sale of the goods to Fraleigh Medical too, Warren. What did they give you for it anyway?”

“They gave me half a million dollars. Pretty neat for just an idea, right?”

“You’re full of shit too. I happen to know you got only 100 grand for it.”

“Well, why’d you ask then? Anyhow, it was enough to pay off my debt and still earn a nice profit. So, what do you want the hard drive back for? I know you’ve got backups of it. Something else on there you don’t want me looking at?”

“I’m sure you know the answer to that. I don’t think you’re clever enough to make much sense of it, but there are those who might be willing to buy the ideas from you like that asshole at Fraleigh did. He’s been fired, by the way. How did you happen to find a guy like that?”

“Poker buddy.”

“Ah, two of a kind.”

“Listen, not that there’s a whole lot of traffic on this road, but why don’t we take this discussion up to my brother’s house over there? Turn around now and get moving.”

He had a gun on me, so I did as instructed and started moving slowly forward along the shoulder. “How is it you happened to get the drop on me just now, Warren?”

“Lucky coincidence. I was out hunting across the street when I saw you drive by. I recognized your car, and I saw the Indiana license plate. How did you happen to find me, Alan?”

“Wasn’t that hard. I figured you were a mama’s boy and probably lived with her in Fort Wayne when you were there. She had some choice things to say about you, you know. Told me to tell you to go to hell. She’s not too fond of you.”

“Yeah, I did kind of piss her off when I emptied her bank account,” he said, chuckling.

“You know, you’ve got a real gambling problem, Warren. Perhaps you ought to quit gambling; you kind of suck at it. You ought to stick to electrical repair that you’re half decent at.”

“Gee, thanks for your advice and your ringing endorsement, but I think I’ll live the way I want to live. Keep moving. We’re almost there.”

“So, what’s your plan here? You gonna shoot me?”

“That’d make that sexy wife of yours pretty upset, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, it would. She’d probably come after you. She knows where you are too, you know?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m not going to be here much longer.”

“Listen, Warren; how about I just get back in my car and leave. Keep the damn hard drive.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so. You tracked me down here and came all this way. What’s to stop you from trying again? I don’t want to have to start worrying about you turning up somewhere. Just keep moving.”

We’d reached the two-track and turned to go up it. “So, where’s your brother, Dennis?” I asked him.

“I think he’s at some damn hillbilly bluegrass thing this evening. Bunch of hicks down here, you know. Eat that shit up.”

“So, it’s just us, huh?”

“Looks like it. Why don’t you walk up there beyond the house and past that shed and stop for a second while I duck in there for a moment?” He kept the gun trained on me, but pulled the door of the shed open with one hand, reached just inside the door, and removed a round-point shovel.

“Alright, get moving again. Just follow that path into the field back there. I’m right behind you.”

“So, you’re going to shoot me, dig a hole, then bury me. Is that it?”

“Mm, not quite. You’re gonna dig the hole.”

 

 

(3 more chapters to go)

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Trent Lyons: Callie's father, who is a lawyer. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University. Harold Carmody: A patent and infringement attorney. Wilson Fraleigh: The owner and president of the company that bought the patent from Warren. Samuel Dvorak: Warren's former employer. Elizabeth Meyers: Warren's mother. Dennis Meyers: Warren's brother. Andrew Olafsen: Alan's new assistant at the store.

Chapter 44
What We See - Chapter 40

By Jim Wile

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of language.

Recap of Chapter 39: Alan offers Andrew Oleson the job after checking his references. He then closes shop early, and buys a blank gun as a deterrent if needed, and prepares for the long trip to Arkansas the next day. He leaves early the next morning and arrives there 10 hours later. He lets Ginnie know he arrived safely, then finds out where Dennis Meyers lives and heads over there.

 

After secreting the blank gun in his jeans, he exits the car only to find Warren, who had been out hunting, has spotted him. When he turns around to confront Warren, there is a rifle pointed at him. Warren is not going to let him just get back in his car and leave, so he orders Alan to head up to his brother’s house while he keeps the gun trained on him. They stop at a shed, where Warren retrieves a shovel, and he orders Alan to keep moving. Alan correctly guesses that Warren plans on shooting him and burying him, but Warren is going to make him dig his own grave first.

 

 

Chapter 40

 

 

“Alright, start moving. Make for that big tree there in the distance.”

I was about 20 paces ahead of him and walking slowly. I had to think of a way to escape from this lunatic. Even if I could pull my blank gun, which he didn’t know about because he never got close enough to frisk me, what good would it do? Unless the sound of it firing gave him a heart attack, it was pretty useless in this situation. I had to think of something else.

We were walking through a rocky field of sparse scrub grass. There were a few trees here and there, but no houses around. It was desolate, and if he were to shoot me, no one would likely hear the shot, or even if they did, they wouldn’t think much of it. Apparently, Warren hunted around here, so I’m sure occasional stray shots meant nothing.

Maybe the guy would chicken out. He never struck me as a killer. Perhaps he didn’t have it in him. But could I bank on that? No. I had to think of something to distract him and perhaps just run off, out of range of a shot. Who knows how good of a shot he might be? I could always zig-zag to make it harder to hit a moving target.

I didn’t have too long to think about this because he told me to stop after another 20 paces. We were now 100 yards behind his house.

“Alright, Alan, this is far enough. I’m going to toss you the shovel now, and I want you to start digging. I’m going to stand well back behind you so you won’t be able to throw dirt at me, but I’ll have the gun trained on you the whole time.”

He tossed the shovel then and stepped back a few more paces. I just stood there watching him.

“Now pick it up, turn back around, and start digging.”

“Why should I? You’re going to kill me anyway; you can dig my grave yourself. Besides, I don’t think you’d go through with it. You’re no killer, Warren.”

“Yeah? Don’t bet on it. You wouldn’t be my first, you know. Let’s see now; you’d actually be my fourth. The first was kind of accidental, but the other two? Well, it was pretty much this same way. I could shoot you right now, but I really don’t like digging, so if you want to live a little bit longer, and perhaps—and I’m not saying it’s likely—but perhaps you’ll even think of a way to get out of it somehow. So, pick up that shovel and start digging.”

He had a point. Maybe something would come to me with a little more time. I reached down and picked up the shovel, turned around, and started digging. The soil was slightly dry, so progress was slow, not that I was objecting to this. It gave me longer to think. It was a little bit rocky too, and the shovel would often hit a rock as I drove it in with my foot. One rock that I hit was nicely rounded. Because the soil was dryish, it didn’t cling to the rocks, especially the smooth ones, and this one was fairly smooth. It was about half the size of my fist and would make a good projectile if I could somehow separate it out and put it within easy reach. Rather than throw the shovel-full of dirt containing this rock on the existing pile I had been making beside the hole, I threw it a little to the side, so the rock was away from the center of the pile now. As long as I didn’t bury it with subsequent shovel-fulls, I would be able to bend down, pick it up, and use it as a weapon.

In college baseball, I started out at third base, but they saw what a good arm I had because of the long throws needed from third to first, so they turned me into a relief pitcher. With a little practice, I could probably still throw a 90-mph fast ball with good accuracy.

Now I just had to figure out a way to distract him long enough to pick up that rock and bean him with it. He was 20 feet behind me, and I would have only one shot at this, so I’d better be accurate.

I continued with about five more shovel-fulls as I got up my nerve. Then I stopped to stretch my back. I turned around to face him and looked over his shoulder.

“You must be Dennis,” I said.

Warren turned then to look behind him, pulling his gun off me, and in that split second, I bent down and picked up the rock. When he turned back and began taking his aim again, I hurled it at him. It struck him right in the forehead with a thud, and he went down like Foreman after a straight right from Ali. The rifle fell to the side as I ran up to him. He was out cold.

He'd fallen for the old “Hey, look at that!” trick, and much to my great relief, he was no longer a threat. Now, what to do with him? I could see his chest rise and fall, so he wasn’t dead, but I wasn’t about to lug him back to the house. I planned to go back there and search until I found the hard drive. I didn’t want him coming to and coming after me again, so I decided to restrain him.

 

All I had were his belt and my own, so I removed both. I turned him over so he was prone and bound his hands behind him with one of the belts. I tied the other belt around his ankles. Then I bent his knees back to bring his feet closer to his hands and tied the two belts together, pulling them quite tight. He was essentially hog-tied. I made sure everything was tight, picked up his gun, and headed back toward the house. On the way back, I emptied all the bullets from the rifle, smashed the firing mechanism against a boulder to disable it, and heaved it into the scrub.

I entered the house through the unlocked side door. It was a two-story house, and on the first floor were the kitchen, which this door led into, a dining room, a living room, and another room off the side, which I guess was a den. The place was disgusting. There were beer cans strewn all over the floor, piles of garbage here and there, sparse, ratty-looking furniture, and piles of old magazines in two of the corners. It stank too, as if there were dead animals in the walls. There weren’t any obvious places to have stored a hard drive down here, so I went upstairs, where the bedrooms were. They were the most likely place I would find it.

I started by glancing into both bedrooms. The one furthest from the head of the stairs, was a complete mess with an unmade bed, clothes covering the floor, and more magazines piled in a corner. The other, which was right opposite the top of the stairs, was quite a bit neater. I figured Warren was staying in this one. Besides the bed, there was a dresser and a desk. The bed was made, albeit sloppily. Opposite that was the dresser, and beneath the window, which was directly across from the door to the room, was the desk. This room also reeked, so I opened the window wide to be able to let in some fresh air. There was no screen on the window, but what did it matter if a few bugs were let in?

I figured the hard drive would probably be in one of the desk drawers. It wasn’t in the top drawer on the right or the next one, but I found it in the bottom drawer and pulled it out. I recognized it as the hard drive from my computer.

As I was sitting there enjoying my victory, I heard a deep voice say, “Who the hell are you?”

I turned around and saw a huge man standing in the doorway, holding a shotgun, pointed right at me. This had to be Dennis, home early from his bluegrass show.

“A friend of your brother’s,” I said as I stood quickly and flipped the hard drive at him like I was throwing a frisbee. I then reached behind me, pulled the blank gun from my waistband, and began firing at him. He was so startled by this rapid turn of events that he began ducking and backing up, but there wasn’t much room until he reached the top of the staircase, and suddenly, he lost his balance and fell backwards down the stairs. I heard the shotgun fire and the sound of a large body tumbling backwards down the stairs until there was a sickening thud as he reached the bottom. He had lost his grip on the gun during the fall, and it was lodged between some balusters of the banister, many of which were broken during the fall. Dennis lay in a heap at the bottom, and he was groaning loudly. His leg appeared to be badly broken, and I could see bone sticking out the side. It looked like an elbow was bent completely backwards as well.

My hastily-derived plan had been to hurl the drive at him, fire the blank gun, then jump out the window over the desk to the roof of the den below, which was only a few feet down, but his fall down the stairs eliminated the need for that plan. I picked up the hard drive from where it had fallen, went down the stairs, and stepped over Dennis’s body to reach the floor. Dennis was still groaning loudly while cursing and crying at the same time.

I found the telephone on a table on the side of the staircase and placed it down next to him. “Better call for help, Dennis. Your brother’s unconscious back there about 100 yards behind the house too. He’s tied up. I’m taking off now. Good luck.”

And I left.

 

 

(2 more chapters to go)

 

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Trent Lyons: Callie's father, who is a lawyer. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University. Harold Carmody: A patent and infringement attorney. Wilson Fraleigh: The owner and president of the company that bought the patent from Warren. Samuel Dvorak: Warren's former employer. Elizabeth Meyers: Warren's mother. Dennis Meyers: Warren's brother. Andrew Olafsen: Alan's new assistant at the store.

Chapter 45
What We See - Chapter 41

By Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 40: With his rifle pointed at Alan, Warren leads him back behind his house, where he intends to shoot him after having him dig his own grave. Constantly thinking of ways to escape, Alan uncovers a round stone while digging and makes sure he can easily grab it. When he stops to stretch, he turns around and distracts Warren by saying hi to his brother, Dennis, who isn’t there. While Warren is distracted, Alan picks up the stone and hurls it at him, striking him in the head and knocking him out. He then hogties him using two belts.

 

Once inside the house, he searches for the hard drive and finds it in an upstairs bedroom. As he is enjoying his find, he is confronted by Dennis, who has returned early from the bluegrass show, and is now holding a shotgun on him. Alan hurls the hard drive at him, pulls the blank gun from his waistband, and starts firing. Startled, Dennis backs up out of the room but falls down the stairs, breaking his leg and arm. Alan gives him the phone, tells him to summon help, and informs him Warren is tied up behind the house. He then leaves.

 

 

Chapter 41

 

 

On the way back to the motel, I grabbed some fast food for dinner and brought it back to the room to eat. I felt like crashing after that, even though it was still pretty early. The 10-hour drive, followed by the adrenaline surge of meeting the Meyers brothers and getting that hard drive back, served to wipe me out. I promised Ginnie I would call her, and I’m sure she was anxiously awaiting the call.

She picked up after one ring. “Alan?”

“Hi sweetie. I got the hard drive, and everything’s cool. I’ll be coming home tomorrow.”

I could hear it in her voice when she said, “I’m so relieved. I just had a bad feeling that something could go wrong. Did it?”

“Well, not wrong enough that I didn’t get the hard drive back unscathed.”

“What does that mean, ‘not wrong enough?’ Did something bad happen?”

“I’ll tell you the whole story when I get home. Right now, it’s all I can do to stay awake. Only hearing your lovely voice is what’s doing it.”

“Okay, but you’d better tell me everything when you get home.”

“I promise I will. I love you. Tell Tommy I’ll see him tomorrow evening.”

“I love you too. Get a good night’s sleep so you can drive safely tomorrow.”

We said our goodbyes, and I got ready for bed.

 

 

 

All the way back, I debated what to tell her about yesterday. Should I let her know how much danger I had really been in? I remember what problems we’d had when I hadn’t told her everything about myself soon after we first met, although for a good reason then. But I couldn’t think of a good reason not to tell her now, so I just decided to lay it all out for her. No more secrets.

I called her once from a rest stop and told her I’d be home around 7:00 PM, and she said we would have dinner then.

Over dinner, she and Tommy got the whole story out of me. They peppered me with questions. It came to such a rapid, shocking conclusion that they both just stared at me in awe for a few seconds.

Then Tommy said, “Man, Dad. You are one badass!”

Ginnie got up, came over to my chair, and put her arms around me. I stood up then and held her as she buried her face in my chest. I could feel her trembling, and her tears were wetting my shirt. Tommy also came over and put his arms around both of us, and we just stood there a while as we all thought about how close a call it had been.

When Ginnie regained her composure, she said, “I know with that last part with Dennis, you were acting on pure instinct, but Warren had his gun on you for a long time, and you were digging your own grave. Weren’t you scared? It didn’t seem like you were.”

“You bet I was. As soon as I turned around and saw him with that gun, I was scared. But I never felt panicked. I was always thinking of how to escape and what his weaknesses might have been. I never gave up hope that I would think of something to get out of it. It’s a good thing I’d been a pitcher, though, or it might have ended differently. But at the very least, if I’d missed and he’d killed me, he would have had to dig the damn grave himself. There’s that.”

She gaped at me then, but she couldn’t hold it in and began laughing. Tommy laughed too, and then I did, and the tension seemed to melt away as the laughter grew and grew, well out of proportion to the actual joke, until our sides began to hurt.

When we finally settled down to normal, I stood there looking at my wonderful new family, and I flashed back to where I had been just a couple of years ago. I had lost my job and my reputation, had a sick father in a memory care unit, and had to sell my house and move away. It was hard to envision starting over after all that, and for a while, the future had been looking grim for me. But you can only wallow in self-pity for so long before deciding to take action and make an attempt to dig yourself out.

And then I met Tommy, and soon after, Ginnie, and my life took an immediate turn for the better. I consider myself very lucky to have come to this place where the future now looks bright. With my loving wife and son at my side, what I see now are good things ahead. There will be problems to solve, new goals, and new challenges, but I am in a much better place to face them with people who I love supporting me and urging me on.

 

(The final chapter coming Friday)

 

 

Author Notes

CHARACTERS Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985. Archie: David's orange tabby cat Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan. Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse. Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St. Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street. Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend. Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher. Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school. Trent Lyons: Callie's father, who is a lawyer. Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop. Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University. Harold Carmody: A patent and infringement attorney. Wilson Fraleigh: The owner and president of the company that bought the patent from Warren. Samuel Dvorak: Warren's former employer. Elizabeth Meyers: Warren's mother. Dennis Meyers: Warren's brother. Andrew Olafsen: Alan's new assistant at the store.

Chapter 46
What We See - Epilogue

By Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 41: Alan leaves the Meyers brothers and heads back to his motel, where he calls Ginnie to tell her he’s fine and got the hard drive back. She has some doubts about the danger from the way he told her, and he promises to tell her the whole story when he returns.

 

He arrives home the next day in time for dinner, where he relates the entire story to Ginnie and Tommy. With great relief, she hugs him and begins crying when thinking about the danger he has been in. Tommy joins in a group hug. Alan cracks a joke, which eases the tension as they begin laughing uproariously. Alan then reflects on the good fortune he has ended up having in the last two years since he met Ginnie and Tommy and made them his family.

 

 

Epilogue

 

 

Late spring, 1987

 

 

The following week were the tryouts for the Junior League baseball teams, and Tommy did well enough to be accepted into the league. I filled out an application to become a manager then and submitted it. I was dismayed to find out a week later that they had turned me down. It was hard to imagine why with my credentials, having been the coach of the high school team, but I had a feeling what it might be, and I called the president of the league for an explanation.

Sure enough, someone on his staff had old information about the incident with Tina, so I set him straight about this and asked him to call Earl Pinkham for confirmation. To his credit, he did that, and he called me back and apologized for the misunderstanding. He gave me the manager position on the spot and assigned Tommy to my team. Artie had also made the league, and I asked if he could be on the team too.

The first practice was held a week later. This league was for boys aged 13 to 15, and, because it required tryouts to belong, the caliber of the play was quite good. The field size was now a regulation baseball size, as was the pitching distance.

I enjoyed teaching these young teens the finer points of the game and helping them hone their skills for high school ball and perhaps beyond. It felt good to coach again. I was often in contact with my friend Bobby Harken, who was doing well as the Grove Park High coach, and I told him I was grooming these youngsters to play on his team in a few years. He kept asking me when I was coming back to teaching, but I kept telling him it probably wasn’t going to happen, at least at the high school level.

 

 

 

 

Over the next few months, I had time to perfect my invention since my new assistant, Andrew Olafsen, was working out very well. He was even eager to do some overtime work and wanted to work Saturdays, which was fine with me. Tommy also continued to put in some hours at the shop, and, unlike Warren, Andrew really liked him and helped him learn a number of times.

I only needed to spend about two thirds of my workday doing repair work, which allowed me both to work on the invention and to begin holding more computer classes. They were the same two classes I had taught my middle schoolers, but I was now charging tuition for them, which brought in extra money. People from all walks of life took these classes, and I also developed a few others on specific topics like word processing and spreadsheet skills. The home computer was becoming very popular now, and much of our repair work became focused on this as well.

 

 

 

 

Six months after I had submitted my provisional patent application, it was accepted, and I now had a year to submit the full application, but during that time, my idea was safe, and others could not beat me to the punch.

I was able to integrate the “computer” with the glasses so that it is no longer a separate unit held in the pocket or on a desk with wires running to it. It's now a streamlined cylinder mounted on one of the temples (the parts of glasses that fold up), where the speakers are also mounted inside the enlarged temples. It isn’t wireless yet, because that technology still isn’t quite there, but I was able to run ultra-thin wires through the temples and encase them within the bridge to reach the other side. Thus, the camera, the speakers, and the “computer” are all connected now with out-of-sight wires.

Well within the one-year period, I applied for the full patent and received it within another six months. During this time, I continued tweaking the design and thinking about the best way to get this invention on the market.

I met with Harold Carmody, the patent lawyer, on a couple of occasions, and he explained to me that there are three different ways to proceed:

    •    I can manufacture the device myself.
    •    I can sell the patent rights to a medical manufacturing company for a

          flat amount.
    •    I can license the usage rights.

There are pros and cons to each. I am not really interested in manufacturing the device myself. I like inventing and the research it involves, but I also like teaching. Fabrication is a distant third.

My computer classes, as well as the coaching I'm doing, have reawakened my love for teaching, and I thought the best way to combine research and inventing with teaching would be to become a professor at the college level. But this is more of a long-term goal, since I would have to start by getting an advanced degree and perhaps becoming a teaching assistant at the same time. I would then apply for a faculty position somewhere. This would take money and time.

I would need a sizable amount of money to finance additional schooling and help Ginnie provide for our family while doing so, and I figure I would have to sell the business to avoid spreading myself too thin.

I could get an immediate chunk of cash by selling the patent rights, but I hesitated to do that because I would lose all future rights to the device. Plus, if it’s very successful, I could potentially make a lot more money by licensing the usage rights and earning royalties instead. If it’s as big a hit as I’m expecting it to be and I'm able to find a manufacturer with the same vision, perhaps I could get a fixed amount up front and negotiate a high royalty percent. That would be the challenge—to find just the right manufacturer.

Mr. Carmody thought my approach was a good one and suggested that I attend a few trade shows where I could meet representatives of companies interested in developing new products. That was an excellent idea, and I immediately began looking in trade journals for advertisements for trade shows.

I attended several of these with my invention and talked to a number of companies about it. I had interviews with several who expressed great interest, and I received some attractive offers. In the end, I decided to go with Fraleigh Medical. I had been very impressed with Wilson Fraleigh’s integrity in helping to set things right earlier by withdrawing his patent application on my invention. Since that time, he had fired his brother-in-law, and he no longer had that albatross around the neck of his company. He had made me the best offer I’d gotten for the usage rights, which allowed me to keep the patent. In addition to a 15% royalty rate, he had advanced me $100,000 free and clear without the necessity of taking it out of the royalties.

I now had enough money to finance my acceptance into the master’s program in electronics at Purdue University in nearby Lafayette, Indiana. I began attending at the beginning of 1988.

We continued to live in our house on Loser Street, next door to my store. I ended up selling the business to my assistant, Andrew Olafsen. I still own the house, and he pays me rent, but the tools and supplies and all aspects of the business itself are his now.

 

 

 

 

During these years, I earned my master’s degree and was a teaching assistant as I had envisioned. Once I got the degree, I applied for an assistant professorship right there at Purdue and was hired.

Also, during this time, my Text-to-Talk Readers became a big hit, and the royalties from them came pouring in. Fraleigh Medical did a phenomenal job of manufacturing and promoting them, and that went far in helping restore their damaged reputation from the years Fraleigh’s brother-in-law had had such a ruinous effect.

Tommy benefited greatly from the readers. For someone who is only moderately dyslexic, as he is, they did wonders to help him learn to properly identify words and to increase both his reading accuracy and speed when he wasn’t using them. He ended up graduating near the top of his high school class and is now enrolled in a fine arts program at Indiana University.

 

I had coached his baseball teams all the way until he entered high school, where he was on his high school team, and now he plays shortstop on his college baseball team. Although it’s a three-hour drive, Ginnie and I go to all of his home games.

Ginnie was eventually promoted to head nurse on the ICU and later became a hospital administrator at Sparrow Hospital for the remaining years that we lived on Loser Street. After Tommy graduated from high school in 1992, we moved to Lafayette, where we built a house. Ginnie joined the administrative staff of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital while I taught at Purdue.

I also enrolled in a PhD program because I eventually wanted to be a full professor. It was during this time that the effort I’d spent in getting the hard drive back from Warren was paying off because I began pursuing some of the ideas documented on it and was able to attain several other patents for devices based on them ahead of the competition.

I was beaten to the punch on one of the ideas, though: short distance wireless communications. That was first patented by Swedish inventors in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. It later became known as Bluetooth, and a Bluetooth Special Interest Group was formed, of which I became a member.

Now, my major focus is the classroom. Teaching college students, especially in the engineering field, is a far cry from teaching high school students. My current students remind me of my dedicated group of middle school kids who attended my first programming classes. They are paying good money to be here and show a genuine interest in their studies—not all, mind you—but certainly most of them. It’s exciting teaching them, and a number of them work with me on my ideas in the engineering lab.

Over these years, dyslexia research has come a long way in combating the incurable malady that it is, and my invention of the glasses is an important tool in this effort. It is also in high demand by the blind as another tool besides braille to be able to read text.

 

 

 

The royalties from the usage rights for the invention as well as our professions provide Ginnie and me with a very comfortable life, and we are both doing what we love. Tommy too is very happy with his program at IU.

I never did hear what happened to the Meyers brothers, nor did I hear from them again, but one day, out of the blue, I got a phone call from Tina Cassidy. She is living in Ohio now and went to college, where she studied social work. She said she is working as a junior high school guidance counselor, advising kids with the kind of advice she wishes she had gotten during her wild years. She apologized again for the trouble she had caused me, but I told her I thought it was wonderful how she’d learned from the experience and had turned herself around into a responsible adult.

She had somehow heard of my success, both in the field of invention and now as a college teacher, and she just wanted to let me know that she is doing well and to express her sincere gratitude for my helping her to straighten out her life.

In a way, I’m grateful to her too for helping to bring me out of the timid shell I had once been locked in, largely due to my early experience with dyslexia. If not for Tina and the resultant resignation from teaching high school, I might never have found my new path or met the two most significant people in my life. It had been a painful experience and transition, but ultimately worth it in the end.

The biggest lesson from my life so far has been that we can’t always trust what we think we see, and we must find a way to the truth to overcome the false impressions that so often lead to misunderstanding and misery. This takes an open mind in the case of preconceived notions, false rumors, and outright lies. And it takes a creative mind to overcome the physical problems, like dyslexia, that may be obscuring the truth. But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that the effort to get to the truth is always worth it and is of utmost importance in leading a happy and fulfilling life.

 

 

 

The End

 

 

Author Notes

Many thanks to all who have been following this story. Your reviews and input have been invaluable in helping me improve it as each chapter was posted. I very much appreciate the time you took to read and review it. It was fun for me to see how you would anticipate some of the action to come, but I hope I was also able to surprise you a few times. In some cases, your ideas even sent me off in a new direction. When I start a story, I only have a general idea of the theme and a vague idea of where the plot might go. I am more of a pantser (write by the seat of my pants), and the plot is largely determined by where the characters take me. At least until about halfway through, then I'm pretty sure where the story is going, and I will plot that out roughly. An important aspect of writing a novel is pacing--something you don't have to worry about as much with shorter works. It's a challenge to make each chapter interesting but yet not pack a lot of irrelevant action into the story that doesn't either support the theme or help in character development. When reading a chapter every few days, the way we do here at FanStory, you often find yourself wondering why a character acted a certain way, and you sometimes don't find out the answer until later. Often, in my responses to reviews, I would say, "Just wait; it will all become clear soon." In real life, hardly anyone reads a novel this way, so patience is a virtue. I've been posting this story for about four months, and it's not even a very long novel (69,000 words, or about 250 pages). But this makes me all the more appreciative of how you've hung in there, patiently awaited the next chapter, and been willing to accept the fact that the answers to your questions will likely be coming. I must continually remind myself to do the same when reading others' novels on FanStory. Thank you, dear friends, for giving me a forum to present this story and for the interest you showed in it. It was a very gratifying experience for me. Jim Wile

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