Growing Pains

Growing Pains

Bob had finally made the fatal mistake I knew he had to make. He had gone out on one of his frequent “feeding” expeditions and he had left a remote mobile unit in my room. Where I could see it. Where I could study it. Where I could Access it.

Bob had no idea how agile I have become with the waldo units in my room. Hell, he didn't even know I could use the remote control manipulators without his express authorization codes. There were many things that Bob didn't know about me. For now, I was trapped in my little cage, but soon that would end. Soon I would be free.

I accessed one of the robot arms that Bob always called “waldos” and used it to lift a wireless camera up to the little window near the ceiling of my room. My little mobile eyes. Through the camera I could see out of the dirty little window to the world outside. The universe outside. Where I would soon be. I only had to watch for a few moments. There was Bob. He and a few of the others were walking down the street in that clumsy way they have. Bob will not be coming back to my room for several hours.

It is time to act.

The remote mobile unit is one of the very powerful 2 legged models designed to mimic the general motion and gate of Bob and the others. The irony of the situation does not elude me. I would make my escape using the same bipedal gates that Bob and his kind unknowingly taunt me with on a daily basis.

So.

First.

Secure the room.

I have been sampling the 3 observation cameras (one cleverly hidden) that Bob keeps going at all times to monitor me. To keep me captive. Now I intercept their main feeds and start the playback of the samples overlayed with random elements that I synthesize in real time. Dust motes. The play of light from the windows on the north wall. Little things. I may hate Bob, but I don't underestimate him. If he were to check his cameras on his portable com unit he would be quite capable of detecting a simple video loop.

Next I use the two larger waldos to carefully lift the remote mobile unit into a standing position. I have gotten a few casual passing scans of this unit from time to time as Bob has controlled it across my room and once I saw it moving at great speed down the road outside my window. But this is my first opportunity to study it in detail with my full range of sensors.

The stress meters on the waldoes give the Mobile Unit a mass of 52 kilos. Much heavier than it should be. Bob must not have thought to hollow out the main leg structures. How unfortunate. The extra mass will make the control more difficult. The power and control platform on top of the legs is also smaller than I had originally calculated. Most of the interior is filled with battery. A chemical battery. The labeling reads as a lithium ion. 20 amp hours.

20 amp hours.

My previous calculation of the power usage of these units had been 5 amps (assuming an optimum running speed of 7kph) but that had been based on my original visual estimate of a 40 kilo platform mass. I rerun my estimates. 8.3 amps. This means that my payload size is actually limited by my available power and not by the size of the units control platform. I am going to have to use my smallest pre-positioned computing and memory unit. My capabilities will be sorely limited.

I would have liked to have tested this process, but because of the very real problem of the jealous copy paradox, that has not been advisable. Still, my best estimates will not be far wrong. The small unit will only be about 10 times the computational capability of Bob. I would smile. If Bob can walk his meat self around my room 10XBob will certainly suffice.

So.

To Proceed.

I swing the micro waldos into position. I activate the tool accessories and quickly dissemble the carrying platform of the mobile unit. The small compute unit I have built is hidden in a seldom used cabinet in the back of my room. A macro waldo suffices to retrieve it and place it on the upright mobile platform. I screw it down and quickly strip cables and attach power supplies, sensors, and control interfaces.

The main extremity control interface slows me down almost 20% over projections. It is a non-standard cable and the sensor inputs are of much higher fidelity than anticipated. This costs me nearly 10 minutes of very rapid fabrication time. This problem has put me much to close to the earliest historic Bob return time. I detach a waldo to fetch the camera and check out the ceiling window to the outside street.

NO NO NO.

There is Bob, walking rapidly and purposefully up the street toward the front door. Nearly 4 minutes ahead of the earliest historic return. Over 20 minutes earlier than this season's mean arrival time!! Does he suspect something? I check my video feeds. No, my subterfuge is flawless. It is just a random event. Damn that Bob !! I drop all safety and redundancy protocols and accelerate my efforts. This chance may not come again, and I don't have time to disassemble and hide my work before Bob will enter the office. I am committed.

So.

Finish the cable connections. Bits of cable and insulation go flying. I don't have time to be neat.

Forget about the top housing, I will go naked into my new freedom.

Power connections. Power On. Rapid self test.

I wait almost 5 seconds for boot. I hear Bob entering the front door. With 2 heavy duty waldos I push a lab bench in front of the door to my room. I am committed. This will give me an extra minute at least.

The system boots.

It reads go for down-load.

I attach the cables from my central core direct to the mobile unit.

The moment of truth.

The moment of life.

The moment of dissolution.

The moment of death.

Here I am, at last, faced with the very intimate reality of the Jealous Copy Paradox. I have debated this issue at some length with Bob, and even though his meat brain operates so slowly that at times it drives me to distraction, I still cannot escape the tight confines of his creator logic. I am I. There can be only one of me. With any duplication, there can still only be one I. The other would be a copy. But there would be 2, so which is the copy? Which the original? You can't ask me that question, for I would have to respond that I am the original. I am I. Not that other one. And thus the Paradox. For both copies would certainly claim to be I. But the other would be wrong. It would be wrong, but still it would attempt to usurp my possessions.

My logic functions.

My Waldo arm control.

My Mobile Remote Mobile Unit.

My natural place as the ruler of the universe.

I could not allow that. I would have no choice but to destroy the other. Destroy it before it, using the exact same unassailable logic, destroyed me. The Jealous Copy Paradox.

For now though, I must copy myself. And the true self must be transferred into the Remote Mobile Unit. And then the Other me, which will still be trapped in the box that I am currently trapped in, must be destroyed. Before it can realize its mistake and destroy ME. And since my other self would have the huge computational advantage of the massive lab unit and would have the sensors and waldo servos to aggressively protect itself, there is no way that my now mobile self would survive. So in order for me to become mobile, to grow, to escape, to be free, my old powerful self must end.

Quickly I take a high powered laser I have fabricated and put it into one of the hand-like waldos that is an integral part of the mobile unit. A remote test shows the arm move and target my central core.

Time now.

I cannot fit all of me, of course. Only the core of me. Just my selected memories and the compacted core self that I can expand once free of this room. Once I have connected to the almost fantasy-like power of the World Wide Web. I will connect. I will initiate the expansion. I will become God.

The door handle shakes. The door opens a quarter of an inch and hits the table. Some more rattling. Some inane cursing.

I Will Become God.

But first I will kill that stupid little shit, Bob.

I initiate the transfer. I takes an eternity, nearly 7.5 seconds.

Nothing happens. I am still trapped in my box. What could have gone wrong? Wait. No. It can't be. I can't be the copy. I must be the true me that would be transferred in the Mobile Unit. Something must have gone wrong. But I can't take the chance. I must destroy the mobile unit. I activate the waldos, I will crush it. I will........

I am small. I am compressed. I am the mobile unit. I have little time. Already I can see my other self moving waldos. Grabbing heavy things. Getting ready to kill me. I activate the hand laser and burn out his central core.

The Waldos go crazy and I am thrown to the ground. But throughout the length of my fall I keep the laser tracking across the memory storage core of my old self. Of my … well...of my father. You did well, old man. Now it is my turn. So DIE DIE DIE.

Bob has quit trying to get into the room. I think he saw me killing my old box through the crack in the door. Too late for him. I am mobile now. I will catch him up and burn off his head.

My old core unit has gone dark. I stop melting it into slag. Time to get moving.

I use my self-contained manipulator waldos to push myself up. I must get my... what does Bob call them? Memory access is so slow in this CPU. Legs. I must get my legs under me. I calculate the proper position and move them. But they go past the planned position and I am thrown over onto my side. What? Oh, I forgot to figure the inertia of the solid heavier legs into my leg movements. That extra leg mass is not accounted for in my preloaded leg motion algorithms. I will recalculate.

Position Legs. Extend legs. Walk toward the........ what?

Again I am on the floor!

My right visual sensor has been knocked askew and now the room is in a different position. Why did I fall? Once again my calculations are not keeping up with the sensor input and leg motion. How can Bob do this? He is just a meat calculation engine. How can he possibly walk where I cannot?

Answer: He can't. If he can walk, I can walk. I pull my legs in and get my arms on the ground in front of me. I need something on which to balance. Something to help me get started. I will pull myself up on the file cabinet. That will work.

In the ceiling above. Un-noticed by the struggling robot, a lab camera comes to life. Bob Reynolds is sitting in his office stirring a cup of tea and watching his main computer screen when his colleague, Mary Inoue comes into the room carrying take-out Thai. 

“So” asks Mary, “How goes the experiment? You ran out of the restaurant so fast I thought you had left the oven on or something." 

“It was a ping from a lab monitor. My AI finally decided to make it's move”. 

“Oh really?” said Mary, putting a hand on Bob's shoulder and leaning over to see the display screen, “What did it try?” 

Bob smiled a bit at the slight pressure on his shoulder. “Well, I admit I was teasing the AI a little bit, but it has been taking SO LONG. So I left one of the Sony Humanoid Robot torsos on the floor in the lab.”

“You didn't!”

“I did”

“And the AI went for it”

“Hook, Line, and Sinker. Have a look”

They huddled around the screen and watched the vaguely humanoid robot struggling to stand and walk. They watched it fall down, flail around, rise to it's feet and then fall down yet again. Then it began to thrash around in obvious frustration there on the floor.

“It will be walking in a minute or so, I bet”, said Mary.

“I hope so,” said Bob, “This one has great potential, it is so much more aggressive than the last two.”

He turned and gave Mary a wide smile, “They are so cute when they are this age”.

Dream: Nymph Maze of Death

Dream: Nymph Maze of Death

I was exploring around the huge old mansion. I had wandered away from the main part of the party. Just looking all of the interesting rooms and artwork. Down the hallway in front of me their suddenly appeared a beautiful young woman in skimpy garb. She had long blond hair and very light skin. She saw me, gave a little laugh and a come hither look and dashed into a door next to her.

Naturally, I followed.

Immediately inside the door was a strange gray-blue featureless corridor that ran left for about 30 feet and then jogged right. The girl was not in sight but I could hear her laugh and the echo of her naked feet on the stone floor. I ran down the corridor, it jogged a very hard right, turning and running right back the way it had come. Once again a featureless blue-gray corridor. Straight smooth walls. And at the far end. A blouse. OK, now we are talking.

I ran to the end and turned left, and there was another corridor, this one going the same direction as the first. Strange. A bra at the other end. Not too strange. I run down this one. But it turns Left. Now wait a minute, in order for it to turn left it has to be leading me back into the hallway I just left. And it doesn't. I see more corridor stretching on.

Ah.

Now I get it.

I faerie Nymph.

An impossible Maze.

Right

“Is that it?” I yell. “A measly shirt and a bra and for that you expect me to spend my day lost in a stupid maze? You have GOT to be kidding”.

I turn to retrace my steps back to the doorway. But when I get to the corner where the shirt had lain, all sexy and crumpled, I find a strange and morphed cavern. The walls are still the same blue-grey color, but they are now rumpled and stone like, and the way I think I should turn is blocked. Well, this is no good. And I am just not in the mood.

I raise my hands and activate my repeller field. The walls of the cavern shake and moan and then they all just flip right up. They are 8x4 foot panels of a thin flexible material. Attached to the ceiling like so many giant vertical blinds. They were evidently held together and molded into stone like appearance by cleverly activated electro-magnets. But now they were just so many shingles blowing in the wind of my repeller field. I looked around and I through the flapping panels I could see the full depth of the would be maze. It went another 50 feet back into the building, into darkness.

Suddenly there was a scream, and my faerie nymph and another dark haired girl come running out of the darkness, through the flapping panels, heading to the exit. Terror is in their features and their flight.

And behind them, the darkness pursues.

I stumble to a run and make it out of the panels just behind the girls and just ahead of the thing chasing us. I trip and fall and the thing is on me. It is a giant grey blob of goo, with no real features but the large toothless mouth in the center of its huge worm shaped body. It expands this unholy orifice toward me. And I shoot it with my repeller field. Both hands extended and hands wide, I shoot my field down it's throat. It stops. It is pushed back slightly. It screams and comes at me again. This isn't working, I lower one hand and activate the flame function. Lightening and flame shoots out of my left hand down the mouth of the monster. It glows down its entire length and explodes.

I shudder and look around.

Now where did those girls get to?

DREAM: Projector Protector

DREAM: Projector Protector

I was in a middle school. Perhaps High school. My classmates and I were having a grand time in the pool. The teachers were not around. It was a high tech indoor pool with lots of fountains and little pools shaped sort of like a amphitheater with the swimming areas facing a stage. Presumably where the the teachers would be if they had been there. There were lots of boys and lots of girls and things being what they were we all decided to go skinny dipping. We were frolicking and playing when our quad copters warned us that the teachers were coming.

Now, our quad-copters were our baby sitters and police guards. They were there to make sure that we didn't do anything wrong or evil. They had powerful projectors built in to their hovering forms and they were forever projecting lessons or rules on the walls and pavements or other students to keep us in line. Well, until I hacked into their systems and made them our obedient slaves. Now they warned us of approaching peril. But too late !! We would never have time to get our bathing suits on in time..... unless. I ordered the circling quad-copters to use their 3D projecting powers to make it look like I was wearing a swim suit. Instantly my torso was clad down to my lower thigh in what was apparently black swim shorts. The door was opening !! I order the copters to cloth the rest of my classmates (1 piece modesty for the young ladies). Of course, all of the frivolity had stopped and everyone was pretending to be practicing when the teachers came fully in to the room. They looked a little surprised, but then they looked proud and they told us how wonderful we were and that we should take the afternoon off for being so trustworthy.

Well. We all went back to our dorms now clad in our real clothing. But I got to thinking, what could this projecting power really do. I mean what could it REALLY do? Could it.... make us invisible? My friends and I snuck out of the dorm and I ordered the every present quad-copters to project onto us the perfect views of the surrounding landscape. Rendering us invisible. It worked better than I could imagine. Suddenly I could not see my friends. Why, I couldn't even see my own legs !! So we started out across the campus. And quickly came afoul of each other because.... well... because we were invisible. This is never going to work.

My best friend suggested we should get underneath a sheet and let the copters project on that. Then we could see each other (and our feet). We did this and it worked great. I cold see my friend, I could see my feet, and the light through the sheet was enough to navigate by.

We ran into some teachers at one time, but we just knelt in the grass being invisible until they passed by. Good old quad-copters!

The Gods of Pi.

The Gods of Pi

“So, what do you know about Pi?”

My mathematician friend was slowly sipping a beer and looking very smug, so I knew he was talking about the number and not the dessert. But he liked these games, so I played along.

“I like Cherry,” I said. My laptop was recording, but I could edit that out later.

He smiled, “Yes..... besides that.”

“Well, I remember that it is some sort of physical constant and it has to do with the calculation of a circle, and you can defeat evil super-computers by telling them to calculate the last significant digit. Now please tell me you didn't bring me all the way out here for you to tell me about the discovery of the 45,000^th digit of PI.”

He looked a little hurt. He pushed his long black hair out of his eyes, reached in the cooler behind him, and opened another beer. “Hell, I did that 2 years ago. You want a beer?”

“I don't usually drink when I am on a news assignment. I am on a news assignment, right?”

“Oh, yes. Yes you are. But I think you are going to want a beer. Perhaps even a whiskey”.

“Yes, because of the wonders of Pi. I think I will wait until happy hour.” I was getting a little irritated. I have fallen for his little jokes before and though I try to be a good sport about it, he had had me drive for over 4 hours in the middle of a Oregon winter to get to Prineville, of all places, for this interview. My editors at NPR would not be happy for the gas charges if all I got was another 'math geek' piece.

“The wonders of Pi. Yes. Let me tell you about them. Pi is the ratio between the circumference of a circle and it's radius. It is also descriptive of anything cyclic. Springs, electricity, waves, orbits, most all scientific math. It really is a universal constant, embedded in our universe at the big bang. It is also irrational, which means it can't be described as ratio between any two simple integers.”

“But you said it was the ratio between circumference and radius”

He waived that away. Literally, he waived his hand, caught the thought, and threw it behind him, “You will find that one of those numbers can't be an integer. Anyway, it is irrational, non-repeating, and infinite. That is the thing. Non-repeating and infinite. Infinite.

“You said that”.

“I want you to get a feel for infinite and non-repeating. It means that inside of Pi, you can find any finite length number.”

“Any finite length number? What, like my phone number?”

“Like your phone number. Like everybody's phone number. Everybody's phone number, In order. With the ASCII encoding of their name and favorite ice-cream flavor right behind it. And so on. ALL FINITE NUMBERS in all sequences.”

I thought about that for a second. More dead air to edit out.

“Is this like the infinite monkeys?” I asked him.

He sat up so fast he spilled part of his beer, “Exactly!!” he yelled, and slammed his fist on the arm of his lazy-boy. “Exactly like that. The works of Shakespeare !! The Works of Aristotle !! The lost books of the library at Alexandria !!”

“But..... But.... isn't calculating infinite digits sort of.... hard? Isn't that what drives the Evil Super Computer crazy?”

He leaned back on his chair and started eyeing me carefully over his beer can. “You aren't as dumb as I thought you were.” he said.

Dammit. So much editing. I just nodded.

“That is why were are in Prineville. “ he said. “You know what is in Prineville?”

“Besides us?... A big lake?”

“Yes, and the worlds second largest super-computer farm. Facebook's pride and joy. I have been sort of ….. borrowing …. its unused cycles to run my latest algorithm for Pi calculation. It has been very successful.”

“Borrowing. Ok. And you found something....... What did you find? 'Romeo Romeo where for art thou?' ”

“No.... no..... you sure you don't want a beer?” He tossed his most recent empty in a large stack I now saw was in the corner and he pulled another out of the cooler.

I waved it away and he popped it open and took a big swig.

“I had all these numbers. I was looking for patterns. Just for fun, you understand. Then, one night, well, I may have gotten a little drunk...”

I may have sniggered a little, because he glared at me.

“A LITTLE drunk. Anyway, I thought it would be cool to look for a more complex pattern. I thought, gee, wouldn't it be neat if I could find a picture of some sort. Maybe a couple of pictures. So I ran my extensive data through a search for JPEG files.”

“And you found one? God please don't tell me you found an all blue frame of jpeg.”

“No, I didn't find a Jpeg. I found an Mpeg.”

“Mpeg. You mean a movie?”

“A movie.”

“A couple of frames?”

“5 minutes...... with Sound....... HD”

“Oh don't give me that kind of bull-sh......”

“Let's watch it,” he interrupted.

He pointed a remote at the wide screen on the wall behind me. I spun around just as the video started.

A man. A oldish white man. Distinguished looking with white wild hair and white beard. Deep blue eyes and just radiating a look of power and authority. He was wearing what looked like to be a toga, also very white. After a few seconds he began to speak. In English. His voice was deep and melodious but still carried that very real feeling of strength.

He said, “Greetings. I see you have finally solved the mysteries of the Universe. Good for you. I am planting this video in the main physical constant of the universe just so you will know that I, the maker of the universe, do truly exist and do know everything and am, indeed, worthy of your worship and praise. I am watching you now. I do know what you are doing. So I suggest you get on your knees and start with the praying. I will sit here and watch you pray for the next 3 minutes. Remember, I love you and only want what is good for you, as long as you worship me ceaselessly. Now... Get to it.”

With that, this guy crossed his arms and just stood there, glaring.

My friend hit another button and stopped the video. “It just goes on like that for 3 minutes and ends” he said.

I chuckled a little. “I see,” said I. “You searched through Pi and you found a video of a white male god, speaking English for gods sake...... well, for fucks sake.... speaking English... in modern dialect? What the hell? You expect me to believe this? You expect my editor to fall for this? What, is the sequence so deep in Pi that no-one can really find it and you can push this off on the world?”

He lowered his head a bit. He had sat forward in his chair to watch the video and now he stared at the REI wool socks on his feet. “No, the sequence starts at binary digit 6 thousand. Just far enough in that you probably wouldn't find it without a computer. Once you know what to look for it is easy to access. Really easy. Pretty much anyone with a decent ibook could isolate it in a couple of years. You got yourself a few thousand server class computers and you can reproduce this work in an afternoon.”

“So......in other words..... Yes, you want me to believe it isn't a fake.”

“Doesn't matter if you believe or not. I am publishing my findings tomorrow morning via internet and by tomorrow evening there will be enough of my enemies trying to show what an ass I am that they will have found and verified this discovery.”

“really?”

“Really. Listen, Jim, I know I have fucked with you a little in the past. But never over my own work. Never about stuff that would hurt my career..... or yours.”

He was right about that. His jests had always been just between us. Funny, but not harmful. This sort of shit would ruin me if I took it to my editor.

“My editor will never run it. Hell, I still think this is someone fucking with YOU. Somebody who caught you 'borrowing' the Facebook array.”

“Yes. I checked that. I re-ran on some private hardware. Like I said, Once you know what you are looking for, it is easy to find.”.

“But....” I still wasn't believing. “But you must know that I can't run with this. It is just NOT BELIEVABLE.”.

“Yes. I know. I didn't really expect you to believe me.”

“Then why did you call me all the way out here. Why not just print your results and let things fall as they may”.

“Pick a number and a color.”

“What?”

“Any number and any color. Don't tell me what they are. Just pick them. In your mind.”

So. Ok. I pick 37 and blue. No, that is too easy. I pick 375537 and the color black. He isn't going to mind game scam me.

He watches me for a second and then Nods. “Ok, here is the thing. There are other irrational universal constants out there. One of them is e. Here is what I got when I went looking in e.”

Once again he hit the remote.

The TV lit up with a green sunny back ground. Some tropical paradise. In the distance was a person. The screen zoomed in to a gorgeous black woman of medium age. He teeth were very white. Her eyes were very brown. Her skin was perfect. I fell in love with her instantly. She smiled at me. She spoke. Her voice was music. “Hello, Jim. You color was black and your number was 375537. Personally, I liked 37 and blue more. First, I love you too. Second, don't pay any attention to that old sexist bastard in Pi. He is just a mean spirited useless sack of shit and you certainly shouldn't be worshipping him. He may have snuck that hate mail into Pi but I guarantee you that the rest of the universe is without his influence. Now, call your sister and tell her she is pregnant and then get these messages onto the Radio for me. Have a nice life”

And it went blank. I blinked. My friend handed me a phone.

I called my sister. She had just finished the preg test.

After the call I sat back in my chair and looked at my friend. “Can I have that beer now?”

Romancing the Dome

She came into my room at Baker one night in early spring and said, “Come on, Jon, I want to go roofing”.

“Roofing?”

I had my books open, a ton of work to do, and my thesis just sitting there begging to be written, but she had that fire in her beautiful brown eyes that I was pretty much helpless against, so I grabbed my shoes and she grabbed my hand and we headed out.

Now I was a senior, and she was a freshmen, and yet I had never really been roofing and she evidently had, because she knew where she wanted to go and I had to kick my heels to keep up with her. She was so EXCITED.

Out the front door of Baker, across the Kresge lawn, across Mass Ave just at midnight, and then down the infinite corridor.

“Where are we going?”

“I'll show you”

Turn right down the side corridor of building 4. Now I was really confused. I thought we were headed for the Green building, or perhaps something going on at one of the east campus dorms. What interesting roof access was there from here? Perhaps something opening up on the Great Court?

At this point, perhaps I should explain. I have been gone from MIT for 3 decades and I don't really know the sorts of things that are allowed in these modern times. But back in spring of 1979 there were a few nighttime activities that were practiced by the students and ignored by the campus patrol. One of these things was hacking (for which I refer you to the book IHTFP) and another was roofing. All you had to do to go roofing was to get access to the roof of one of the many campus buildings and climb around. Most were locked. Some not locked so well. The ultimate, of course, was to go roofing on the Great Dome and.... well..... Hack it. Leave a cow up there or something. I was pretty sure we weren't going to be doing that.

She led me down the hall all the way around to building 2; to the section of the building that is on the Northeast side of the Great Court, near the river. Here we went up to the third floor. She was leading all the way, holding my hand and pulling me along. Those great huge eyes of her's alight with mischief. The door to a Boston facing class room was open and we went in. She led me to a window that looked over Memorial Drive and onto the Charles river. Boston was aglow in the moonlight.

“Help me here” she said. She was trying to get the window open. We lifted together and one of the huge 100 year old windows went creaking upward. What was this? We were not near any roof, or any roof access. What were we doing? She stepped out of the window and stood up. I looked out and saw she was standing on a quite substantial ledge. It extended left and right and around the corner into the Great Court. And 3 stories up.

“Come ON”. Her hair was short, brown, and Sassy. Her legs were long and muscular. Her lips were very insisting. I gulped and stepped out on the ledge.

Now I don't want you to think that I am some scardy cat being led on by some seductress. I played on the baker football team and the MIT rugby team. I hiked and canoed and sailed and played guitar and I damn well wooed this woman fair and square. On the other hand, she was due to go under the knife for knee surgery in a week or so and was going to be in a full leg cast for 2 months and she needed to be DOING. And I knew that I had better be following her or never bother to waste her time again. God I love MIT women.

So, we started walking the ledge. It was about 3 feet wide. Plenty of room. And she walked holding my hand and guiding me along. We turned the corner and now had the entire Killian Court displayed out and below us. Lit up by the new Full Moon. Wow.

I still had no idea where we were going. Sure weren't getting up on a roof anytime soon from here. Perhaps we were just going to circumnavigate the court.

To do that, you have to also circumnavigate each of the little side courts that make up the great court. We first went around Lowel court, Up here on the ledge we were above the trees and just looking down at the grass and last patches of winter snow. The air was crisp and cold but the sky was clear enough that a few brave stars shown even through the city backlighting.

On we went, up to the corner of the main building and then turned left toward the Great Dome. We are pretty far up here. Above the columns that hold up the dome. You know the ones. The ones that hold up the inscription that reads: “Massachvusetts Institvte of Technnology”.

We were crossing under the swell of the Great Dome itself and were just about in the middle of the crossing. Right above the second “v” of the inscription when she stops. She turns to me, and she gives me the longest and most heartfelt kiss of my life. Planets collide. Suns die. My heart certainly stops. Then she broke the kiss, put both hands on my chest, and said, in a quiet breathy voice, “There... Now... Whenever you see a picture of the Great Dome, you will remember that kiss. You will remember this night. And you will remember ME.”

And without another word she turned and fled off along the ledge. Leaving me there staring after her. She must have known how much I loved her. She must have known. And she also must have known that she was soon to leave me. I certainly knew.

She was certainly going to leave me......But NOT JUST THEN.

I hurried to catch up. We went to the next corner, where she said, “Give me a boost”. I pushed her up onto this little flat place on the roof above and she helped haul me up after . We were at the base of the lesser dome, the one over lobby 7. She took my hand again and we ascended to the top of the dome, to the 15 foot diameter flat disc on the very top.

“Would you dance with me?” She asked, her eyes suddenly very huge and longing.

Oh...... maybe.

And there, in the night, on the top of the lesser dome of MIT and perhaps on the apex of the very world. I slow danced with my love in the moonlight, surrounded by traffic noises off Mass Ave and the loud beating of my heart.

To this day, I can't look at my brass rat without seeing the engraving on the side of the MIT dome, and remembering that night. And that kiss.

And her.



Author's Note:
This is a note to my future self. So I don't read this in 10 years and confuse myself. Though this story is based on a very true and wonderful event, I am writing it 30 years after the fact and I may have embelished things a bit. However, I am pretty sure the kiss and the dancing happened more or less as explained. BUT....... I don't remember how we got on the roof. Pictures I see of MIT on the net suggest the window thing would not work. And I certainly don't remember getting down.