Ravennittes
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System Architect - Ch 42
🕑 Added 2024-10-16 16:00:10 +0000 UTCSurprise extra chapter!
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My first semester went well. I went home for winter break and returned after the new year for the start of the spring semester. I marked my second year back in the past with an extra scoop of ice cream.
It was around that time where I noticed a few stories being written that looked like they’d taken inspiration from mine. That didn’t mean I was going to stop my own story, but it meant that there was at least some interest in the ideas I’d brought up. That they would one day be real was besides the point. It was a test—or so I told myself after it became clear that it was a commercial flop—and I wanted to see how much that would be able to influence the eventual outcome.
At the end of my second semester at the university, two things happened. The first was that I had to choose my concentration officially. I went with business administration since I was leaning that way. That I would have to create a business with some engineering students as a long-term project solidified my choice.
The second was that Julia and her family were graduating and moving out. I cried and hugged them all the day they left. Though it had been a short time, they were good people. It had been fun to have people I could somewhat relate to nearby to hang with.
Unlike them, I was allowed to stay in the same dorm over the summer and into the next year. I went home for a while to spend time with my parents and grandparents. Instead of going to a day camp, I spent a handful of weeks split between everyone.
I returned to the university two weeks before everyone else. That gave me enough time to get all of my textbooks and other items for classes in a relaxed fashion. Without the mass of students yet to come, the campus was surprisingly quiet and relaxing. It felt great to let loose when there weren’t people around to watch me. The big negative were the closed cafeterias. Mom and Dad helped me go shopping for enough prepared and frozen meals to get me through the couple weeks until classes started.
In the first week of the semester, I got an email from the professors in charge of the interdepartmental project. Attached was a list of everyone participating, their major, and contact information. Along with that was a document containing the assigned groups. I looked through them for my name and found the two people I would be working with were Martin—a computer scientist—and Dinesh—an electrical engineer. I shot off an email to both of them requesting a time and place to meet.
After some back-and-forth—during which Martin tried to get us to meet at one of the local bars—we agreed to meet at the library after classes. I arrived early. Though I’d been to the library a few times, I’d never really looked at it. It was of the same sort of Gothic architecture as the rest of the campus’ oldest buildings. It was—in the simplest sense—a temple of learning complete with stained glass windows running from top to bottom along the sides of the building. The bulk of the building was cut stone left in its naturally gray state.
I went inside though the heavy wooden doors. The library had two floors with a grand staircase in the middle. The wood of the bookshelves, railings, and other fixtures inside looked positively ancient. They were all nearly polished in a way that gave the place a warm and homey feeling. I secured one of the private booths to wait for my partners. I sent them a text with where I was.
While I waited, I used the time as best I could. That meant completing what homework I could. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait too long before I heard the door open. I looked up and saw a man with a dark mustache and tanned skin enter. His face twisted in confusion upon seeing me. I waved.
“Dinesh?” I guessed.
“Yes?” he said hesitantly.
“Hi. I’m Milton, but I go by my middle name: Eddy.”
“Oh,” he said, still confused.
“We’re partners in the project with… Martin?”
I had to look the name up to be sure.
“But you’re…” he began.
“A child? Yeah, I know. The school paper ran a story about me last year… not sure if you read it.”
“I didn’t. But I do remember hearing a rumor about a really young student. I guess that was you?”
“Probably?”
Dinesh shrugged and sat down across from me. We talked about the classes we were taking and joked about some of the professors. I learned that we’d actually taken some of the same courses together but with different professors.
Martin wandered in ten minutes later. I’d considered getting started without him, but Dinesh said we should wait a bit longer. The man was clean shaven with blond hair. He stood at the doorway looking at the two of us.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Who’s the kid?”
“Our partner,” Dinesh said.
“What the hell, man! Can’t go to a bar because of a kid.”
I heard him grumble some more under his breath. What he said was not nice. I don’t think he understood that I could hear him. Elevated stats were usually a good thing, but I didn’t need them to tell me that he was an asshole.
“I can hear you,” I said.
“Well good for you!”
“Are you going to be our partner or do we need to kick you out before the project even begins?” I asked while rolling my eyes.
This—while more overt—was exactly why I disliked group projects. There was always that person. The person who didn’t pull their weight or somehow screwed up everything to the detriment of the group as a whole. I was thankful that I’d done IT for a living in my past. Though I didn’t know how to program particularly well, I was sure I could figure it out if we had to kick him out and couldn’t get a replacement.
“I’m going to transfer or do the project next year if I can’t,” he declared and left.
I looked at Dinesh, stunned.
“Well, that happened,” I said.
“Mhm,” he agreed.
With nothing better to do besides start planning for the project to be the two of us, we got to work. We both threw out ideas of what we could do. Eventually, we settled on making a water recirculator for salt water aquariums. Dinesh had one back home.
“The challenge with salt water is that it corrodes electronics,” he said. “I have to replace those things every year or two because they keep failing. What if we could make something better? I think it would sell pretty well, right?”
“Maybe,” I cautioned. “That’s what I’ll have to figure out—the logistics, business plan, and all of that stuff. While I do that, you’ll have to make it work and we can do the testing to find out if it’s better than what’s already out there… and also make sure there aren’t any patents we’d be stepping on by doing this.”
“True. I’m going to do some research. I’ll email you when I have an idea so we can meet up again.”
“Sure. I’ll start on the market analysis.”
Dinesh nodded and left.
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Over the next two weeks, I threw together a basic business plan and did a quick survey of the competition, pricing, and qualities of the products available. I sent that over in an email to Dinesh who replied that he had an idea of what to do but needed another week to do some testing before meeting with me again in person.
During that time, I also received an email from one of the professors in charge that Martin had dropped out and wouldn’t be helping us. Because of the requirements of the project, that meant his portion would need to be divided between me and Dinesh. There were other dropouts but not enough to move groups around without leaving someone all alone.
I was somewhat surprised that the System hadn’t given me a quest for the project. It usually did with bigger things. The only reason I could guess that it hadn’t was because the project was required for me to complete my studies and was graded. That grade was already reflected in another quest and doubling that up might be against the way the System worked—and something I had no control over. I’d checked several times.
Classes were more intense in my third year of college. Correspondingly, so too was the reward of experience for every class I went to. It wasn’t a big increase—just a couple of experience per class—but it added up. I was nearing 200,000 experience saved up. While not quite enough to purchase anything I really wanted—and not before I talked it out with my parents—I was glad to see it pile up nonetheless.
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Dinesh and I met at one of the other cafeterias on campus. He—a junior like me—was living off-campus with friends. Since I couldn’t really leave campus to meet him there, we met just before the dinner rush. It was the least used cafeteria on campus, which meant a lot more freedom for us to talk without being bothered by others.
“So,” Dinesh said showing me stacks of paper, “my idea was to use magnets to get around the corrosion problem.”
He showed me a diagram of having the motor outside of the tank with magnets to turn something inside the tank. The parts inside would be inert with respect to the salt water, which meant anything sensitive—the motor and electronics—would be safely on the other side of the glass.
“That’s a pretty good idea,” I said. “What about the programming requirements?”
Dinesh shrugged.
“I figure we can throw in an oh-two sensor or something like that to turn the motor on and off as needed.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad to do,” I said thoughtfully. “Maybe a salinity or temperature probe would be good additions?”
“Why not. Who’ll handle the programming?”
“I’ll do it,” I said. “You focus on making the thing work physically and I’ll do the programming and the research portion.”
“Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll send updates by email. I hope we can have everything ready by the end of this semester… then use next semester for the paper and data collecting.”
I shrugged. It didn’t bother me either way. His portion would be more time consuming than mine—at least it would have taken me more time to do his.
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Working with Dinesh was honestly great. Without Martin to cause problems, we worked pretty well together. I did my patent research and finished the business plan insofar as the initial design was concerned. I’d have to do a few edits when it was actually a working prototype.
Between school work, the project, and the quests, I was always on the go. It was beginning to wear me down. Even the week off after midterms wasn’t nearly enough time to decompress before the pressure started back up again. I understood why many people found college difficult to complete when working a job at the same time. To me, the daily quests were another job.
Junior year was also the time many people looked for internships for summer break. I was not one of them. Not only would I not have the time, but I really needed a break from the grind. I called my parents one after the other to get ideas for what to do in the summer. Dad suggested working with him—which got shot down right away. Then Mom pointed out that it might be fun to go hiking with Grandpa Joe for a week. I decided that sounded like a good idea. It would be fun to learn more from him before he kicked the bucket in a few years.
