Ruby: 1500 hours, Saturn Base V engineering bunker
"Damn machine is wrong again," Eli swore colourfully from the other side of the bunker.
I rolled onto my side on the desk so I could see him and glanced at the system screen over his shoulder. I squinted at the figures on the monitor for a few moments and then made a hum of agreement "oh yeah, way off." I hung my head off the desk to peer at it upside down. "Did you forget to input a zero?"
"Of course I didn't forget to input a zero," he said grumpily, "I've always said I don't trust a calculator I can't look in the eyes."
I sat up rubbing my eyes and frowned, a face that Maia said if I didn't stop pulling it would stay that way. "You couldn't ever look a calculator in the eye idiot, they've just got bigger to handle the processing power they never grew legs."
Eli laughed "God, sometimes I forget how young you actually are Rubes."
I folded my arms "I'm old enough to know there's never been a bipedal calculator."
"Who do you think did the maths before you kids had your handheld gadgets and all of us were barely having to exercise our brains because a big machine could do all the calculations for us."
"What?" I said dubiously, "back in the stone ages?"
"Back in the 60s," said Eli with a snort. "It was people, women at NASA did them all, the entirety of the calculations for the apollo mission to the moon."
I raised an eyebrow "sounds like a lot of work to put on fallible resources."
"You know they say," Eli continued, clearly enjoying his teaching moment, "that the astronauts on those missions wouldn't leave the ground until they'd been confirmed by the human calculators even once powerful enough tech had been developed to run them automatically."
"A machine is always going to be more accurate than a person," I shrugged, "it's just basic lack of human error."
"That could've been you kiddo, sending people into space with a brain like yours." He pushed my baseball cap over my eyes.
I grinned for a moment enjoying the feeling of importance even if I thought it was kind of silly.
"Well we're already in space," I pointed out, "so I might've missed the ship on this one."
Eli rolled his eyes obviously enough for me to clearly see across the room. "Want to check those calculations for me?"
"But the computer just did them," I pouted.
"Exactly," he handed me the sheet, "so pull your weight around here and get going or I'll stop letting you steal half of my lunch."
He headed out of the bunker and left me on my lonesome once again scanning over the sheet of figures with a pen. I sat cross legged on the desk sucking the end of the pen thoughtfully to draw the ink toward the front whilst I worked at it in my head. After a few moments of crossing out numbers I scribbled down my answer at the bottom and circled it a couple of times for good measure. I glanced at the monitor to confirm my working and frowned, I was miles off, and I was never wrong. Frustrated and blaming the fact that I'd got to the canteen late this morning and missed breakfast for my blurry brain I folded a new sheet of paper and started again afresh with a new method. After five minutes of furiously scribbling figures, this time making sure I noted down all working on my page so I didn't miss anything out, I compared the two sheets. I had the same answer. I walked over to the monitor and tapped the screen wiping it clean to make sure nothing was obscuring the number – still very significantly different.
I was so engrossed in my third time around workings that I didn't hear Eli come back into the room. He glanced over my shoulder and then at the screen the same way I had been repetitively doing so much I sensed a strain coming on. "Like I said," he scooped up my workings as opposed to the printed dialogue of the computer, "not infallible."
"Eli!" I shouted after him. "Will you ask them who's right? If my working was right?"
His laughter echoed off the curved ceiling as he headed back out of the bunker, I knew when he vanished off with a reel of notes it meant that he had a meeting but as he systematically, religiously, always took his figures out of context when asking me to check them back it was hard for me to have any reference as to what they were for. Jude (when she was still here) used to joke that I could be working for Lochhead. They were apparently a weaponry company back on Earth. She acted like she found it funny, but in actuality I was pretty sure she was copying the joke off of our dad. As I mulled the possibility over in my head it dawned on me that it didn't really matter anymore. Really, the only reason the arms race was frowned upon on Earth was because it funded and improved nations' ability to wage war which in return caused the death of people. Scutters after all, I mused, weren't people, and we needed all the help we could get. I leaned my chin back onto my palm and went back to my calculations with a newfound vigour. So, what if Jude and Ani got to be the ones who got to do the actual fighting, I was potentially getting the opportunity to do something just as cool - to help them.
That momentum carried me through the towards dinner which was agreeable as I was pretty much left to my own devices until then. My daydreaming of building a laser canon was cut short by Eli's return which heralded the usual barrage of questions I threw at him.
"What did they say?" I asked jumping up from the floor where I'd been lying and over to his desk.
"What did they say about what?" Eli had an infuriating habit playing it coy after meetings.
I knew he wasn't allowed to tell me about what happened or what was said but that wasn't going to stop me prying. "About my calculations?" I prompted eagerly.
"Ah right," his face eased. "You're spot on as always Rubes."
I relaxed and leaned back in triumph, "I knew I didn't make mistakes."
"I haven't seen you make one yet," Eli said encouragingly.
"When are you going to tell me what this is all for?" I fidgeted on the corner of the desk trying to catch an expression on his face that would tell me anything. "Can't just keep taking credit for my calculations and not even let me know what they're for."
"I thought that was the agreement," Eli replied dryly. "I let you kick around under my feet down here when you're bored and you do some calculus for me. Anyway-" he waved his hand, "I don't take credit for your work, I say my calculator did it."
I snorted, "again, no one but you would ever use that word to describe a person, but you're deflecting, what's all the calculations for?"
"You are persistent today," he laughed and batted the brim of my cap back down over my eyes which I grumpily adjusted. "I can't tell you, you know that."
"Not even a hint?"
"No, because you're too smart and you'll work it out." he said it good naturedly, but I could tell he didn't enjoy keeping things to himself. "It's confidential kiddo, and sixteen-year-olds don't count as 'need to know' in the industry.
"Are we at least helping the war effort?" I pushed.
"We're contributing." was all Eli would say.