Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7) (30 page)

BOOK: Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7)
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“No. I looked at a couple, but they weren’t written very well.”

Suspiciously Lisanne said, “Okaaay, send them to me and I’ll look them over.”

He mumbled to his AI (Artificial Intelligence) and a moment later a tone and a blink on her HUD (Heads Up Display) told her she’d received the files.

“Meet here again, same time next week?”

He nodded.

 

Back in her dorm room she pulled up the files he’d sent her and cursed. They were much too small to be able to achieve the complex goals the team had been set. Rather than start analyzing them line by line, she just tried them to see if they could possibly respond correctly based on Albrecht’s specifications.

They did.
Every single one of them
.

She began looking through the code he’d written, feeling more and more awed as she went through it. Sparsely written, it didn’t use any of the modules of code that were in such common use that programmers normally just plugged them in to accomplish certain tasks without trying to write something themselves. These common modules were in such wide use that no one knew who’d written them or thought that using them was plagiarism. In places Lisanne could find blocks of Vaz’s code which did the same thing as the canned code blocks. She compared Vaz’s code to three of the modules available out there in various libraries and his were 10-30% more economical of processor cycles. They also spread the load over the
available processors very nicely,

With awe, she recognized that what he’d already finished on each of the eight tasks was head and shoulders above what she
could
do, even if she spent the entire semester on a single one of the tasks.

Lisanne shivered and set out to complete the write-up that would be her only contribution to their
shared project.

 

Lisanne walked into the library the next week and found Gettnor waiting at their usual table. “Hey Vaz, I’m taking you for coffee, let’s get out of this place.”

“I don’t drink coffee.” He hadn’t looked up from the table.

Lisanne grabbed his elbow and tugged. “OK, you can have a Coke or a juice or something.”

Gettnor reluctantly got up from the table, “Where are we going?”

“Union coffee shop. Come on.”

“I’ve never been there,” he said, almost plaintively.

Lisanne didn’t feel any surprise. “There’s always a first time.”

Once she had a coffee and he cof size="+0"had a Diet Coke, they sat facing each other at a little table for two. As she sipped her coffee, she stared over the rim of her cup at him. “Vaz, you didn’t use common code blocks in your programs.”

“I know.”

“You wrote everything new?”

“No, I’ve already rewritten most of the common code blocks. I do it for each one I come across. They’re sloppy.” He said this as if he were offended that someone had written code that was inefficient.

She realized that though he was staring down at the table, she thought he had a nice symmetrical face. He might not be
“model” handsome but he wasn’t bad looking either. “Vaz, look at me.”

His eyes flashed up at her momentarily, then back to his blank slate. He sucked on the straw in his drink.

“No, really look at me. I don’t think you’ve even seen my face.”

“I
have
...” he said quietly, “You’re very pretty.”

“When?” she said in surprise.

“On line. There are many pictures of you available.”

She giggled, trying to decide if she should be creeped out that this weird guy spent time looking at her pictures even though he couldn’t bring himself to
actually
look at her. But he seemed so harmless. Just so exceedingly shy. Finally she said, “Well, I want you to look at me in person! Come on.”

He slowly raised his head and eyes to look at her. His gaze danced around her face, but he never looked her in the eye, merely slid past her eyes on the way to examining other features. After about ten seconds his eyes dropped back to his slate.

“There that wasn’t so bad was it?”

Even at the angle his downward gaze presented she could tell a grin appeared on his face. He shook his head.

“I want to look at you too. Look at me some more.”

He looked up again and she studied him. He actually could be quite attractive she thought, if he could look you in the eye. She turned her head side to side, “What do you think?”

“You’re very beautiful.”

Surprised she said, “Aw, I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”

He looked shocked, “No!” His eyes dropped back down and he almost whispered, “I’ve never said that to
anyone
!”

Realizing how painfully shy Vaz was, Lisanne resolved to stop teasing him. “I was only kidding. We should meet here again next week. You can tell me what you think of the summary I wrote. I sent it to your AI.”

“I’m sure it’s fine. Much better than anything I could write.”

“So, you don’t want to meet with me next week?”

Looking stricken, Vaz blurted, “Yes! Yes, I do.”

Stifling a+0"

 

Lisanne came to feel great joy that they’d been assigned to be a team. Vaz was weird; there was no doubt about that. But he was a genius at programming and would be going on to grad school in, of all things,
physics. He may be weird, but weird in a sweet/brilliant sense and as time passed she’d found that she loved his bizarre, introspective sense of humor.

 

Hope you like it!

 

 

 

BOOK: Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7)
7.92Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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