Boston—about the same time
Massina and Johnny were passing through the hallway when Lisa Macklin ran out of her lab room and nearly knocked them down.
“Whoa, cowboy,” said Massina. “Watch where you’re driving.”
“Trying to catch little Borya. She left this.” Macklin held up a backpack.
“I don’t see her,” said Massina.
“Excuse me.” Macklin trotted to the rail, looked over it, then ran to the elevator.
Massina continued down the hall, stopping to check on the 3-D interface unit, which was refining a program that used gestures to command robots. Simple in theory, in practice the need for a complex and deep dictionary of commands made thing vastly complicated. The programming was the easy part; refining the gestures so a wide range of humans could do them unambiguously was proving nearly impossible.
“Put on the glasses and check out our latest iteration,” offered the project director.
“I’d love to, but I have some things I have to get to,” said Massina apologetically. He was due back in the box. The operation would be starting any minute.
“How we doing, Shadow?” he asked Johnny back in the hall. “How are your legs?”
“Good. Great. How’s your arm?”
Massina gave a short, self-deprecating chuckle. “You know, you’re the first person that’s asked me that all year. Probably since my last checkup.”
“How long did it take you to get used to it?”
“I’m not used to it.” They stopped in front of the elevator. “You never get used to it. You accept it and move on.”
Johnny nodded.
“Eventually it feels more comfortable,” said Massina gently. “But there’s always loss there. Deep loss.”
“Yeah.”
The elevator opened. Macklin stepped out. She still had the backpack in her hand.
“Missed her,” she said. “I’ll have to find somebody to drop it off.”
“Why don’t you take it, Johnny?” suggested Massina. “I won’t need you for a while.”
“Sure.”