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Chapter 55 - Making Friends and Influencing People

“The others” included President Gerston. The whole group from the investiture had gathered in the ambassador’s family dining room for the meal. Gerston was scheduled to go on to Geneva the following day where he was to address the European Parliament, but he elected to stay over to spend more time with this group of people who had so captured his admiration. During dinner, the discussion covered a wide range of topics including the meet-and-greet that Gerston had with the U.K. officials and the unveiling of the new energy-storage units that Emma’s company was producing. She mentioned about the missing device components.

“But this afternoon, I heard about some more irregularities there. There was some apparent pilfering of other components that go into making the core of the energy-storage units. EEC Energy people were alerted by the police who were following up on a mysterious explosion in an isolated, abandoned farm building in the Cambridge vicinity. The police thought it was from gas—LPG—but that was ruled out. An analysis of the debris turned up traces of the polymers that we use in the energy device. One or more people were killed or injured; some traces of human tissues were recovered, but any bodies, if someone had been killed, had been removed. So it seems that someone was stealing materials and trying to build a working device and it blew up on them. But taking a doped polymer sheet set and trying to push energy into it is exactly like taking a bottle of nitroglycerin and shaking it. It’s a very unstable material if handled the wrong way.”

“How do you make it safe, then?” Wixom asked.

“That’s part of Tamara’s engineering design, actually,” Emma said. “The protections against overcharging or even tampering are built right into the core design. She’s the best one to explain how she designed the cells so that they can’t be converted into explosive devices. Tamara?”

“Sure. When the first accumulator exploded and I saw how much power was packed into that tiny device, I realized that I didn’t want my design to have a similar problem to the one that plagued the early lithium-ion batteries. They could explode or catch fire if they weren’t handled or used properly. Actually, they still need care in handling. So I designed the accumulator devices to have a safety circuit. Here’s how that works.

“The integrated circuit which controls the charging and discharging of the device—think of it like a traffic controller—is manufactured in the same clean room where the cores of the cells are being assembled. Then each individual cell is encapsulated in a polymer layer which includes a microprinted conductive screen. Then the whole thing is sealed in an epoxy layer.

“If any part of the screen layer is pierced or damaged in any way, then the energy stored in the cell will be dumped as heat into the charging control circuit and will melt the whole cell into a fused blob. Forced overcharging will do the same thing—it will fuse the cell. Shorting the cell’s terminals triggers a discharge-limiting circuit and locks the output briefly so any connected wires won’t get hot. If someone tries to x-ray the thing to get a picture of the electronics inside, the high-energy photons of the x-ray beam will trigger an overcharge event and cause it to fuse as well. That makes the cells inherently safe, by design, from being used as explosives and they’re safe from being reverse-engineered too. So some bad actor won’t be able to engineer a cell into an explosive; the design even prevents their copying it and passing it off as an official unit.”

“What about heat dissipation?” Denise asked. “Doesn’t the unit generate heat inside when the energy flows?”

“Good question,” Tamara answered. “The heat’s negligible. There’s no chemical reaction involved in producing energy and the components are all superconducting so the energy movement encounters no electrical resistance.”

“I thought of something,” Jeremy said then. “Couldn’t someone just completely discharge the cell and then take it apart? Then there’d be no energy left to melt it.”

“Hey, a budding engineer,” Tamara chuckled. “Another good one. Because of the way the matrix stores energy and replenishes it from the environment, it can’t be drawn down to less than somewhere around 12 to 17 percent of full charge by using its external connections. The residual energy is plenty to fuse the whole cell. But that was a great point.”

“Thanks, Tamara,” Emma said. “Charlie, does that answer your question?”

“It sure does. Thanks, Tamara, that was a pretty impressive explanation and your work is even more impressive,” Wixom remarked.

“Thanks, sir,” she nodded.

Then Sir George spoke. “So it looks like the police are finding out that EEC Energy Solutions has been targeted by spies?”

“Looks that way,” Emma said. “I heard that they’ve got a number of leads they’re working on.”

“Good,” Sir George said.

The discussion turned to other topics and the end of the meal approached. Then, while dessert was being served, Gerston looked around the table, smiling.

“This is an impressive gathering, folks. I’ve attended state dinners with a lot of important people, but this group is far more impressive than any that I’ve been with before. True, I personally have honored five of you for your amazing contributions to the U.S. But the U.K. has conferred ... ah, let’s see, it’s nine knighthoods, right? Sir George has been knighted twice. Dame Isabella. Dame Emma is a Nobel laureate who also received the Field medal and the Charles Stark Draper Prize. Those last two are like Nobels in mathematics and engineering, correct, Dame Emma?”

She nodded, smiling.

“I heard you were recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences, too. Goes along with being elected as a fellow of the Royal Society.”

Emma nodded. “But don’t forget Tamara, sir.”

“How could I ever? She was awarded a Draper Prize too. And together with her friend, Mr Winsberg, both are Clarke Scholars. That’s being chosen as two of the top high school graduates in the country, The entire Alexandre family are national heros; Major Alexandre is a Medal of Honor recipient and all three were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

Nadine put up her hand. “Mr President? I think you’re embarrassing everyone here now. Me too. Look at Denise, Kevin, and Dame Amelia and Sir Jeremy—their faces are glowing red.”

“Oh my, you’re absolutely right. But there’s so much incredible talent in this one room that I want to remember this time together. I made a deal with Miss Tamara, too. That deal will involve the Columbia Institute of Economics and its mission and it’ll be a real challenge for me to satisfy Miss Tamara, right?”

He looked at her, smiling.

“You bet,” she shot right back at him.

He went on, “So I’d like to find a way to use all of your talents and abilities, everyone, to help the Institute when we kick off the projects that the academic council of the Institute is planning. Some of you are on board with us already. But watch out; I know where all of you live, and I might just call on you in the future!”

Everyone laughed and soon began to leave the table. Kevin went over to Tamara as they were leaving the room.

“It’s still early—can we talk?” he asked. “Let’s go back to the sitting room. I want to talk about our schools.”

When they got settled, Kevin opened the discussion. “Gerston said you and Peter were Clarke Scholars, so that means you guys are in Maryland, right? Hopkins?”

Tamara answered, “Yep. Peter and I just graduated from Hopkins but we’re staying for grad school there. I know that Amelia and Jeremy are ... it’s not high school ... you’re going into year 12?” They both nodded. “What about you and Denise?” she asked.

Denise answered, “I’m getting a master’s degree from the London School of Liberal Arts and Education and this summer I need to take one more ed course and finish writing my thesis. Then it’s back to the States and Kevin and I need to finish up at Avery University. We’re ‘super-seniors’ because we took an extra year earning masters’ degrees—but we haven’t even gotten our bachelors’ degrees yet,” she laughed. “So we’ll graduate next spring and I want to go to med school. Kevin has similar plans.”

“But not in medicine,” Kevin clarified. “I want a doctoral program in political science and international relations.”

“So you guys were here to go to school and wound up getting knighted,” Peter said, thoughtfully. “And it was because you showed them that Avery Program? With Amelia and Jeremy too?”

Jeremy laughed. “I guess you didn’t hear her say this, but the PM accused Kevin and Denise of exporting the colonists’ rebellion back to the U.K. Actually Denise single-handedly unraveled two years of the government’s curriculum planning in ed schools and then both of them got a government agency disbanded when they stopped the U.K.’s Naked in School Program in its tracks. They were knighted because Denise and Kevin showed how much money the Brits were losing by keeping the Program going and how much the Avery Program would save the government.”

“And Amelia and Jeremy were important co-conspirators,” Denise chuckled. “The government ministers never knew what hit them when those two nailed them to the wall with how they were violating the law and kids’ civil and human rights too. Then we showed them a video about how the Avery Program worked and they grabbed onto that like a lifeline.”

“You go to Avery University and know about the Avery Program, so...” Peter started.

“They helped invent it!” Amelia interjected. “With their friends at Avery. And then they taught it at my school to a bunch of uni students and also to Jeremy and me. Our school has the country’s pilot program for teaching it.”

“Wow,” Peter nodded. “My cousins—they live in Delaware—told me that their school was looking into the Avery Program this past year and will be starting it up there this fall.”

“Really?” Denise said. “Then they would be one of the few outside of the Atlanta area to do that. Do you know their school’s name? I’ll make sure that they get the most recent curriculum stuff from how we developed it here.”

Peter gave her the information and she entered it into her mobile phone.

“So you guys were the ones who got the Program—the naked one—stopped in the U.S. too,” Peter commented.

“It was a team effort,” Kevin told him. “A number of people played major roles. A lot of very talented people.”

“Emma told me that when she was in high school, they tried to run the Program there,” Tamara told them. “That was when it was first beginning, maybe twelve years ago.”

“Really? Was she in it?” Denise asked.

Tamara laughed, “Nope, she and her friends shut it down before the school could even get it started. But get this—they were in Fairbanks in Alaska! How about that for idiocy?”

Everyone reacted to that news with surprise.

“That’s just about the stupidest thing I ever heard,” Jeremy summed it up for all of them. “Naked, in the winter, in Alaska. What were they thinking?”

Tamara laughed. “You do know that you shouldn’t use the word ‘thinking’ when you’re talking about officials running the Program, do you?”

Jeremy grinned. “Absolutely.”

“Hey, let’s talk about what’s happening next week,” Kevin said. “Next Friday is when Emma’s invited us to the roll-out of Tamara’s energy device. I’m helping my Aunt Janet—she’s the CEO of the Coris Foundation—get settled; they’re moving into a house in Beckenham and the Foundation is finishing its headquarters move from Jakarta. I’ll be helping with that. Denise is taking her ed course but she has Fridays open.”

“And I’m helping my daddy and new mum too,” Amelia said. “Their house is gorgeous; it’s in a park, and Kevin and Denise bought it for them as a wedding gift... thanks again, my bro and sis; love ya. Jeremy said he’d help us too.”

“But we’ll drive up to Cambridge Thursday afternoon and stay at Emma’s. She invited us to stay overnight at her estate there,” Kevin finished.

“Glad that you can come,” Tamara said. “My folks need to return home when Dad’s meetings are done, probably on Tuesday. Peter’s spending a few days working with his collaborator at Imperial College while I meet with Emma’s engineers to look over the prototype specs and performance. The prototype unit has a provision for one kind of wireless energy transmission, RF beams, and I’ve been working on systems to minimize power losses during energy beam transmission. My goal is to do away with high-voltage electrical transmission lines. The prototype will be used to test transmission methods.”

“I guess we’re a bunch of high achievers,” Denise chuckled. “But Tamara’s outclassed us all...”

“No way!” Tamara objected. “I haven’t destroyed parts of the governments of two world powers, you know.”

“Yeah, yet,” Peter snarked. “You guys, don’t give her any ideas, ‘cause when she gets going on one, the destruction in her wake is like where a tornado passed. She’s already shaken up the departmental structure at Hopkins—her ideas have sparked so many cross-disciplinary programs there that the administration has all but given up trying to write program descriptions. Most of the medical, science, and engineering faculty are trying to get joint appointments in other departments just to get a piece of the action. How many collaborators do you have on your neuroscience project now, Tamara? Thirty-four?”

She giggled. “Nuh uh, it’s at fifty-seven now. From sixteen departments, schools, and programs. Just before we left, I got calls from professors in economics, sociology, and philosophy. They have ideas to use the neuroscience findings which my collaborator’s group has been publishing in their respective fields, so that number may increase.”

Peter turned to the others. “See what she’s done? Case closed.”

“Sorry, honey,” Tamara rebutted, “Look at Denise; she did a number on the curricula of all the ed schools in the country. And sounds like the four of them did what my dad told me to do about ending threats when they stopped the Program here. He’s a Marine and they make sure that the threat is gone when they’ve finished their mission. They say, ‘Walk softly, leave no sign that you passed. But if someone interferes with your passage, then end the threat. And never look back.’”

“Ohmygod, Tamara,” Denise cried as she ran over to hug her. “You’re another Marine brat—where’s my head at; I didn’t make the connection. Sure, your dad’s a Marine, duh, saw the uniform. When we’re all back in the States, I gotta hook you up with Cindy Denison. She and her brother Roger, their dad’s a Marine too, had us use Marine strategy to destroy the Naked in School Program back in the States. She’ll absolutely love your ‘no-holds-barred’ philosophy.”

“Well, Denise, Cindy must have taught you well, ‘cause that’s exactly what you did with your little education rebellion here,” Tamara replied. “In my case, that motto describes how I live my life—I had to because of the threats my family faced in leaving Haiti. I just apply it to my work as well—an unanswered question, an unsolved equation, missing data, these are all threats. I leave none behind when I work. And, of course, the threats of evil people too; those I neutralize,” she finished in a tone of voice and an icy glare that gave everyone in the room a sudden chill.

“Shit, Tamara, that was scary,” Kevin remarked. “I felt the emotion behind that last comment.”

Denise shuddered. “Oooh, that was awful—suddenly your spirit became inky black, Tamara—what the hell did you do?”

“Jeez, sorry,” Tamara apologized. “I forgot I’m with a bunch of sensitives here. Part of my psyche is tied up in an attachment to the lwa called Ayizan Velekete. She’s my patron and the protector of the young, poor, weak, and disadvantaged people in the world. I committed to her when I was young that I would never do evil nor abide evil people. This is the source of my abilities, I believe, and how I was able to stop the Program back in my high school. The Program was a serious evil inflicted on the children and had to be stopped.”

“Oh, that’s perfect!” Amelia exclaimed. “That was exactly what Jeremy and I were saying in his blogs and how we got the public’s support behind us, the press too, and that pressured the government to listen to us.”

“You know, Tamara, I’m getting a hint of an idea here,” Kevin mused. “Modesty aside, we’ve got a bunch of wizards here. You’re the tech wizard; Jeremy’s a legal wizard; Amelia’s a humanitarian one; I don’t know Peter well yet but I sense that he’s both a tech wizard and an empathic dynamo; Denise is a psych wizard; and I’m an organizer. We’ve all bonded over the last week, I believe. Perhaps when we‘ve all finished our education, we could get together and see what we could accomplish. Can we all think about that?”

Tamara was slowly nodding.

“Yes, that just may fit in with my own personal long-term plans. So I certainly will give that some thought.”

Jeremy began to say, “It’s kinda soon for me...” when Emma came in with Sir George.

“Okay, you lot, it’s time to break this up. Jeremy, your folks want you to get Amelia home and the Alexandres want to get back to the flat to kip out. It’s been a long day,” Emma told them.

They all promised to talk again on Thursday in Cambridge and then everyone left after saying good-bye to the Gerstons, Wixoms, and Porters.

Cambridge, U.K.: that Monday

During the following week, everyone kept very busy. Tamara and Emma went to Cambridge and Tamara spent the first part of the week getting familiar with the manufacturing process used in building the energy-storage devices. She gave a number of presentations about her quantum electrodynamic theory modifications which showed how electrons could be stored in what essentially was a virtual, multi-dimensional matrix where the quantum numbers associated with the electrons could assume random values—something not permitted by normal electrodynamic theory.

Then she brought out her plans for transmitting energy wirelessly. The preliminary idea was an adaptation of her maser to beam microwaves from tower to tower, a method which was currently in use, but the long wavelengths of the microwaves, together with atmospheric scattering and absorption, made it difficult to keep the microwave beam tightly collimated and keep the energy losses low when sending a beam through the atmosphere. She had mostly solved the atmospheric scattering problems by making them no longer relevant. Her discovery of the space-folding properties of her coil circuit would allow energy transmission through the coils’ folded space, but scaling that invention up to a usable size was proving to be difficult. Also difficult to solve was learning how to produce a collimated energy beam to insert into the transmitting coil and to extract it without losses from the receiving one. She now wanted to turn the research on the energy collimation issue over to the company’s engineers, while she continued work on scaling up the transmission coil to a usable production size.

~~~~

Wilson called Tamara on Wednesday, late afternoon. His part in the talks was complete now and he and Nadine would be returning home on Thursday.

“So how did it work out?” Tamara asked.

“To mix metaphors badly, it was like herding a bunch of horny male long-tailed cats through a big room filled with rocking chairs and female cats in heat,” he chuckled. “Everyone was a prima donna, it seemed, and also afraid that another rep would upstage them and get an advantage. Sir George’s idea—Gerston’s too—of my wearing my uniform was a good idea.”

“How’s that?” Tamara asked.

“Well, the German rep asked me how a military man could help them getting through the technical issues, and I pointed out how, when Alexander the Great was challenged to untie a complex knot in Gordium in Phrygia, which is now in central Turkey—it’s known as the ‘Gordian Knot’ story, we all know how he solved that problem. He drew his sword and sliced it open. I told the reps that was my role and as a Marine, I was highly qualified at both sword-play and problem solving. That broke the ice and we went on from there.”

“Brilliant, Dad! How’d you know that stuff?”

“Your dad’s a history buff, remember? Your mom isn’t the only smart person in the family. After you, of course.”

“Then did you make any progress?” Tamara asked.

“They were just nibbling at the edges of the major issues. I let that go on for a few hours and then got everyone’s attention—in a Marine way. Saying listen up! in a command voice works wonders. I told them that if they weren’t part of the solution, then they were part of the problem. I told them that this was going to change right now and here’s how we’re going to tackle the issues. In a complex military campaign, you don’t attack the final objective right at the beginning. You identify attainable waypoints, soften them up, and then reduce them. Then move to the next. And use multiple lines of attack, without dividing your forces. I explained how that worked, and showed them how to translate the military approach to a problem-solving one.

“I had each rep list the issues and goals each wanted to attain, and we flow-charted them into a time line. I showed them that by working on the agreement that way, using waypoints and benchmarks, it allowed for intermediate evaluation of how the objectives could be attained and allowed for mid-course correction. Doing the agreement that way would also allow for a lot of flexibility and give-and-take; they all loved that. I guess they must thrive on that bargaining crap and I gave them lots of bargaining opportunities. And you know that ... ah, injection of that lie-detection ability you did for me? Well, that was very useful in separating the BS-ing from the real issues, too. So the talks are on track now and the ol’ U.S. of A. reps were happy as a passel of hogs in a mud pit.”

“Funny, Dad. I think you cleaned up that last expression but I get your drift,” Tamara said. “So your mission was a success.”

“To the extent that the log-jam is gone, yep. I did what they sent me to do. Showed ‘em how to drop the egos and work together.”

“Cool. How’s Mom doing with her project?”

“I’ll let you speak to her in a sec. Is the unveiling on track for Friday?”

“Sure. Sorry you can’t stay for that. Emma and I have mostly been catching up with the manufacturing end here and giving the tech staff here some new research project direction. It’s on power transmission; that’s the next step in making energy cheap and readily available.”

“I’m sorry too but I really have to get back. There’s a new equipment installation at the APL and the boss wants me in on the setup. Oh, right. Something else. My premonition sense has been bugging me lately—nothing specific, but it’s a sense that I’ve learned to pay attention to. So you watch out too. We’ll see you when you get back. Next week, right? Love ya. Here’s Mom.”

“Sure. Love you too. Bye, Dad, and congrats.”

“Hello, Tamara,” Nadine said as she took Wilson’s phone. “Missing you already after being together so much last week.”

“Yeah, I feel the same way. So how did your own project work out?”

“You know that Kevin’s brilliant, don’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. He is.”

“So I told you what he said after he learned about my work at the Institute, about getting with some of his foundation’s caseworkers. And he gave me the contact info for Amelia’s grandparents; they’re working in west Africa. So I now have a network of contacts in east Asia and in Africa who are actually working with the target populations that I’m studying.

“Kevin also put me in touch with one of his professors at the London Economics Institute. She’s Nigerian and an expert on the effects of microeconomics in rural communities and actually has some field work experience. I visited her and we spoke for about four hours and we’re going to collaborate on a project we sketched out.

“And after I spoke to those case-worker people of the Coris Foundation and the Hadads in Africa, I can see how to develop the basis for putting a real project together. Kevin is a genius in figuring out people’s strengths and abilities and getting them together on projects.”

Tamara chuckled. “Mom, I actually saw him doing that myself. He’s getting an idea to involve our three couples—him and Denise, Amelia and Jeremy, and me and Peter—in something when everyone’s finished with their degrees. I got a sense of his idea from his emotional signals and it looks exciting. So you have a good research direction now?”

“Absolutely. It was the lack of collaborators and contacts—the things one builds early in an academic career—that was missing for me. Now that’s changed and I can move forward.”

“That’s great, Mom. Dad can tell you what Emma and I’ve been up to. Peter tells me that he’s really made progress in developing a plan for his dissertation research project, so this trip has been productive for everyone, looks like. He’ll be joining me this evening and the others, you know, Kevin et al will be coming tomorrow. And Dad told me about his premonition sense. I’ve gotten it too. It’s nothing specific, just a general warning to stay alert. So I am, and don’t worry.”

“Dad told me and said the same things. But keep safe anyway, honey. We’ll see you when you get back and trade stories. Love you and be well.”

“Bye,” Tamara said and disconnected. So Dad’s got a premonition too, she thought. The last time we both got that sense, it involved family as opposed to one person. But they’re leaving the country tomorrow... I don’t understand. Keep alert; that’s always important.

~~~~

Peter arrived in Cambridge early that evening, coming from London’s King’s Cross Station on a Great Northern express, and Tamara met him with a driver from Emma’s estate.

She greeted Peter as he strolled out of the platform area of the Cambridge North Station.

“Missed you, sweetie,” she told him as they kissed. “So you got lots done.”

“Jeez, yeah,” he said. “It was intense, but this will be such a great project. Hey, you need to see this.”

Peter pulled an envelope out of his backpack, opened it, and pulled out a photo. He handed it to Tamara.

She looked at it and then broke out laughing. “Oh, god, so funny. A Platform 9¾ sign and half a baggage cart sticking into the wall. What are you wearing? A black robe with red... oh! Gryffindor! And is that a wand too?”

Peter laughed, “Yeah, got the whole nine yards. Got a scarf too. There’s a Harry Potter shop near the Platform 9¾ sign. I bought the stuff and got my photo taken. The station management actually played along with the Hogwarts Express idea; it’s a real tourist attraction too.”

“So is there really a Platform 9¾?” Tamara asked.

“Actually there are just some tracks between Platforms 9 and 10, but with a wave of the magic wand, I could see a shadow of a platform there,” Peter joked.

“Funny,” Tamara giggled. “Say, the robe and stuff might be fun to use when we do the energy device roll-out.”

“Yeah, I thought of that, but maybe the Brits are too staid for that sort of humor.”

“I’ll ask Emma; see what she thinks,” Tamara said. “Anyway, keep that photo safe. It’s great.”

They had reached the car now and climbed in.

“Tomorrow Emma wants to take us to see Cambridge University. We’re having lunch with the Clarke Scholars there too. There are eight, she told me, but only five are on campus now. Kevin’s group is arriving in late afternoon.”

~~~~

On Thursday morning, Emma and Andrew brought Tamara and Peter to the Cambridge campus and showed them the sights. Tamara and Peter didn’t realize just how extensive the university is, its thirty-one colleges occupy most of the central area of the city. They visited Trinity College, King’s College, and Queens’ College, and briefly stopped at some of the other picturesque buildings; then they walked on to the Cavendish Laboratory where the Physics Department is located.

There, Emma introduced them to a number of faculty members and they looked at the facilities. When noon approached, they went to the nearby West Café where an area had been reserved for the group. Peter and Tamara met the Clarke Scholars who could come and they exchanged their stories. Having heard Amelia’s and Jeremy’s experiences with the U.K. version of the Naked in School Program, Peter’s morbid curiosity got the better of him and he asked his new friends about their own experiences.

“Cor, mate,” Henry Simms, a physics student going into his third year, responded, “I reckon tha’ you’m not talkin’ ‘bout what ‘appened in the ed school ‘ere.”

Peter shook his head. “No, in ... um ... high school? I forget what it’s called here.”

Simms grinned at him. “Ah, I see, yis, you've got a different system over there. Secondary schools be called years nine to eleven. Then sixth-form colleges be twelves and thirteens. Uni be three years, four if ‘ee take a master’s. Now then, that bloomin’ rot they call a Program only got started up in most state schools maybe two years ago—September before last. Before that, only a few schools in smaller tawns ‘ad it for testing. I was already ‘ere when it started up in a lot of schools. Sarah, you just finished your fresher year—was the naked Program in your school?”

“Awl-gal sckewl, zorry,” she giggled. “They cun’t fathom how to do it there. My Clarke classmate Simon, ee couldn't be ‘ere, maybe... wait, no, ee came from an independent school. They didn’t ‘ave to run the Program in they.”

Simms turned back to Peter. “Unless them new freshers ‘ad it in their schools, then looks like none of us ‘ad to deal with that rot.”

“Oi, I took the new freshers around for their tour,” Charlotte Davies, a mathematics major going into her fourth year, interjected. “Both were in independent schools.”

“So no one here, good. I hear that it’s being dropped now.” Peter told them. “It was a bad idea.”

Davies nodded. “I heard that too; something else is replacing it. Stupid berks; can’t let the teachers concentrate on teaching.”

“Peter and I heard about the program that’s replacing it,” Tamara told them. “Nothing like the naked program and the kids who were in it love it. Sounds like relationship and ice-breaker games with P.E. games in the mix too.”

“Say, you mentioned the ed school, Henry,” Peter said. “I heard something about what happened in the London School of Arts and Education.”

Simms chuckled. “Bloomin’ planks, them government gits. Us heard they was makin’ them ed schools do this bleddy daft uni-level naked program, forcin’ the ed students to be starkers. Us started ‘ere a week later than the London unis and the word got out by social media that all the ed students in the country would ‘ave to take part. So the ed student lot ‘ere all got together and agreed that if Cambridge was included in that, everyone would switch majors and they’d ‘ave empty classrooms. Besides that rot, it’s reet parky 'ere durin’ the school year—can get close to zero in the winter and our buildings are old and are reet drafty, ain’t they. So the ed faculty got the administration to agree to drop the nudity rot. My girlfriend’s in the ed school and she told me about ‘ow they got that sorted.”

“Yeah, our friend in London said the same thing happened at a school there,” Peter told him. “So do you guys get a chance to work on a research project like the Clarke Scholars in the U.S. can?”

“Oh, arr; ‘tis a proper big part of the program ‘ere and there be plenty o’ chances to design your own research, too. ‘Tis encouraged, in fact,” Sarah told him. “My job will bide in nanotechnology—microrobotics in aimed medicine to hand over payloads to certain innards.”

“Cool; my doctoral project is in nanotech too, but in double-E. Control systems,” Peter said.

“Nice. Maybe my project ‘pplication will meet yourn somewheres down the line,” Sarah said.

Then the talk turned to social matters and Tamara and Peter were intrigued to hear about all of the formal and semi-formal events that the colleges of the university sponsored—even super-formal white-tie events that several of the colleges held in May.

During the hour after lunch, the students and faculty circulated among the group just talking about topics of interest. The Cambridge physics faculty all knew about Tamara and wanted a chance to talk to her; many offered to sponsor her for a trip to Cambridge during the school year for a series of seminars in quantum electrodynamic theory, a field in which she was becoming a noted figure. Tamara told them that she’d consider the offer when she knew what her fall schedule was going to look like.

Then they had to leave; Tamara and Peter wanted to be at the estate when Kevin’s group arrived; Emma had work to do at EEC Energy Solutions, and Andrew had several meetings scheduled with a few economics faculty members at the university.

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