10
An Excellent Thesis Topic
Miri kept a low profile around the house, even though that bothered Alice — which was kind of contradictory, since Bob didn't want her talking with Robert anytime soon. Either way, they both seemed to think that given the chance, Robert would just hurt her again.
Okay. She let Robert have the living room whenever he pleased. She made sure she was outside when he was in. But she also snooped on him whenever she honorably could.
Halloween was just around the corner. She should be over at her friends' sites, deep into final planning. She and Annette and Paula had done so much prep with SpielbergRowling. Now it all seemed kind of dumb.
So Miri hung out with farther-away friends. Jin's parents were shrinks in the Provincial Medical Care Group in Hainan. Jin didn't speak very good English, but then Miri's Mandarin was worse. Actually, language wasn't a problem. They'd get together on his beach or hers — depending on which side of the world was daylight or had the nicest weather — and chatter away in Goodenuf English, the air around them filled with translation guesstimates and picture substitutions. Their little clique had contributed lots to the answerboards; it was the most "socially responsible" of Miri's hobbies.
Jin was full of theories about Robert: "Your grandfather was way gone-dead before the doctors bring him back. No surprise he feel bad now." He floated a couple of academic papers in support of his point. Today Jin was hosting several other kids who had senile or otherwise damaged old folks living at home. Mostly they just listened, as sand crabs or simply presence icons. A few presented human forms, maybe their real-world appearance. Now one of those — she looked about ten years old — spoke up. "My great-great-aunt is like that. Back in the twentieth, she was an account executive." Hmm, account executive didn't mean anything like the English words might make you think. "By the teens she was all crippled up. I've seen pictures. And she got drifty and depressed. My grandma said she lost her edge and then she lost her job."
One of the sand crabs reared back, a lurker drawn into the open. "So what's new in that? My brother is all unemployed and depressed, and he's only twenty. It's hard to keep up."
The ten-year-old ignored the interruption. "Gee-grantie was just old-fashioned. Grandma got her a job as a landscape artist — " The little girl slipped into pure picturing, showing old-time cellphone advertisements for background scenery you could rent for when people call and you're in the bathroom. "Grantie was good at that, but she never made as much money as before. And then video landscapes went fully irrelevant. Anyway, she lived with my grandma for twelve years. It sounds just like what you're talking about, Miri."
Twelve years! Vllgo bonkers after even a year of this . She glared at the little girl. "So what happened then?"
"Oh, everything turned out fine in the end. My mom found a treatment site. They specialize in upgraded specialties. Forty-eight hours at their clinic and Gee-grantie had the skills of an ad manager." Which was about the modern equivalent of "account executive."
Silence. Even some of the crabs looked a little shocked.
After a moment, Jin said, "That sound like JITT to me."
"Just-in-time training? What if it is?"
"JITT is illegal," said Miri. This is not something I want to talk about .
"It wasn't illegal back then. And this JITT wasn't so bad. Gee-grantie lives pretty well as long as she keeps taking her upgrades. She seems happy, 'cept that she cries a lot."
"Sound like mind control to me," said Jin.
The little girl laughed. "It is not. You should know that, Jin Li! You, Chinese, with two shrink parents." Her eyes danced about, searching on things the others could not see. "Your parents were in the army, weren't they? They must know all about mind control. That's what you Han tried in Myanmar!"
Jin came to his feet, and kicked sand through the little girl's image. "No! I mean, that is year and year ago. Nobody do anything like that now. We certainly don't!"
Miri decided she didn't like the little girl. What she said was more or less true, but… Bob had talked to her once about the Myanmar Restoration, back when she was doing a history project in the fifth grade. She had quoted him as "an unamed source high in the American military"; in fact, he said the same thing as most websites. You-Gotta-Believe-Me technology had been a Big Nightmare possibility for years. Myanmar was the only place where YGBM had been tried on a large scale. "It all comes down to the delivery problem," Bob had said. "The Chinese army had some new drugs, things that were very persuasive in a research lab. But in the field? The Chinese sank half their budget into YGBM and they didn't get as much payoff as a good propaganda campaign." Humans had a million years of evolution learning to resist the power of suggestion; there was no magic way to beat that!
Now Miri came to her feet, too. "Hey!" she said, in the tone Alice occasionally used. "I didn't come here to talk politics! I came for help with my grandfather."
The little girl stared at her for a moment, her face quirked in an odd smile. The air was full of support for Miri, unanimous minus one. After a moment, the little girl shrugged. "I was just trying to help. Hey, I'll be good. I'm all ears." And she demonstrated with a graphical exaggeration, growing wiggly rabbit ears.
So they all sat down again and had a quiet moment. Miri looked out along the beach. She knew this was the true view even though she had never been to Hainan in person. It was beautiful, a lot like the Cove in La Jolla, but this beach was much bigger, with correspondingly more real people. Out near the horizon there were three white peaks, icebergs on their way to coastal cities farther north. Just like in California.
"Okay, then," said Jin. "How we help Miri Gu? But no JITT. That's a dead end. Is your grandpa good at anything now day?"
"Well, he's always been great with words, better than anyone I know. He has poor clothes sense, but he's become very quick with numbers and mechanical things." That brought a wave of interest; some of the crabs opened up with little stories about numeracy. "But that just seems to send him into a rage." She showed them the story of the disemboweled automobile. If Louise Chumlig hadn't stood up for him, that would have gotten him expelled.
The little girl's big ears had shrunk back to normal size. Of course, she had more opinions: "Heh. I'm reading about him, what he was like before. He had a track record back in the twentieth century. 'Famous Poet,' blah blah blah. But he was only beloved by people who never met him."
"That's not true! Robert never suffered fools gladly, b-but — " She ran out of steam, remembering Lena and the stories about Graunty Cara. And remembering the Ezra Pound Incident.
Jin dug his toes into the sand. "Let's get back to track. Does he have any friends in school?"
"N-No. He's been matched up with Juan Orozco. That kid is like most in those classes, a dumbhead."
"What about friends from before?" said the little girl.
Miri shook her head. All the people Robert had known and helped when he was a great poet, none of them had made contact. Was being a friend such a temporary thing? "There are other old people in the class, but they're on different projects. They hardly talk at all."
"Go for a personality match. There must be hundreds of people with complementary problems." The little girl smiled. "Then arrange for an accidental collision? See, if your grandpa doesn't know you're working behind the scenes, he can't be resentful." She looked up, as if surprised by insight: "Better yet — once upon a time your grandpa stirred up a lotta critical interest. I bet there are still graduate students who would love to fawn on him. Sell one of them a truly excellent thesis topic!"