Page 89 of Ten Years and Then…
Nora knew the theory of how they worked, but it was pretty cool to see it in action. “So how much faster is this than internet through DSL?”
The man—Bryce, she saw on his nametag—said, “Right now, under good conditions it’s ten times faster. But that’s only because there aren’t modems to take advantage of the speed. We’re working on that end of it, and then you’ll see speeds maybe up to a hundred times faster.”
That was impressive. It certainly beat dialing up to AOL over her phone line at home. “I assume you also provide software for end users to take advantage of all that speed?”
“I’m not the expert on the software.” He raised his voice. “Hey, Blue, can you come over here?” A blonde woman in—naturally—a blue QNS shirt ran over. “Can you talk to her about the software?”
The woman talked for ten minutes about software. Nora could just about keep up. “So are you going to be coming out with updated software to take advantage of the new Pentium chips, once they hit the market?”
She shrugged. “Nobody’s talked to me about that yet. If anybody would know, it’s our Team Lead. Tall guy, dark hair—you can’t miss him. Well, you can right now—he had to take Red to first aid. She sprained her ankle. Hopefully that’s all it is, anyway. I’m not sure when he’ll be back, but it shouldn’t be too long. Maybe check back in an hour?”
Before Nora could ask the Team Leader’s name, there was a shout and a suppressed curse from another podium. “Oh, God,” the woman in blue said. “Excuse me, I have to go see what Edward did.”
Nora had other companies to visit; she couldn’t wait here to ask someone else if the missing Team Leader was really her ex-boyfriend who’d been on her mind from the moment she landed two days ago.
But she could come back in an hour and see for herself.
Daniel, the same time
Daniel sat with Red Kristin in the little room—more like a walk-in closet, honestly—that served as the conference’s first aid center. They’d been waiting for someone—surely not a doctor, maybe not even a nurse—for ten minutes.
“You don’t have to sit here with me, Daniel. I’m a big girl.”
She’d said that half a dozen times already. But he was Team Lead, and that meant taking care of everyone. “I’m not going anywhere, Red.” That really did sound stupid. How had he thought it was a good idea? “I mean, Kristin. And you couldn’t put any weight on your ankle, what were you going to do, hop on one leg all the way across the convention center?”
“If I have to, yes. You sound like my big brother right now, you know that?” She chuckled. “Actually, I don’t mind that so much. You are kind of like Bill, come to think of it. He’s quiet, too, but there’s a lot going on under the surface. And you know what else? I’m sort of getting used to the whole Red thing. I’ve had worse nicknames before.”
Daniel wondered if those other nicknames had anything to do with the middle name she didn’t want anyone to know. He wasn’t going to ask; if she wanted to tell, she would. If she didn’t, he had no right to make her feel uncomfortable.
The nurse—or whatever he was—showed up then. “Sorry for the wait. There’s one of me and ten thousand people out there. What’s the problem?”
“My ankle. I twisted it hard.”
“Let’s get your shoe and sock off so I can take a look,” the man said. Daniel saw his nametag—Andy Thompson, RN. Definitely a nurse. That was encouraging.
The way Red’s face went purple and she cursed when he touched her foot was less encouraging. Daniel took her hand, squeezed it. “It’s okay, Red. I’m here with you.” She squeezed back harder, her nails digging into his hand as the nurse managed to get her shoe and sock off.
Her ankle looked swollen, but not horribly. Daniel had read somewhere that if you broke a bone, there’d be huge swelling you couldn’t mistake. The nurse felt around, with more cursing from Red, before he announced, “It’s a sprain. I’ll put some ice on it for ten minutes, then I‘ll wrap it and I think I’ve got a plastic splint in here somewhere. Keep it wrapped, keep icing it, keep it elevated, and you’ll be back to normal in a couple of weeks.”
“Weeks?” Daniel didn’t know Red’s voice could go that high. “What am I supposed to do the rest of the conference?”
“I just told you,” the nurse said, with exaggerated patience. “Keep it wrapped, keep icing it, keep it elevated. And obviously don’t put any weight on it.”
“It’s fine, Red. We’ll take care of you. There’s a CVS a block away—remember, we passed it coming back from dinner last night? I’ll send someone over to get everything you need.”
Twenty minutes later, with Red on one leg and Daniel supporting most of her weight, they made their way back to the booth. It wasn’t until they got there that he properly looked at his hand. She’d actually drawn blood with her nails. And in the back of his mind, he heard Nora’s voice: You should claim hazard pay for that.
Nora, late afternoon
She never did get back to Quantum Networking Systems. After lunch, she went to a demo of the Digital Compliance Library. It was run by the National Regulatory Institute—they published all those looseleaf binders of laws and regulations, the kind they mailed you new pages every month to update with.
It was a lot more interesting than she’d expected. They were replacing the binders with CD-ROMs—one disk instead of twenty books on a shelf, instantly searchable.
Livingston had several of their products, and for her first month on the job, it had been Nora’s job to swap out new looseleaf pages for old.
She’d ended up talking to their sales rep for half an hour after the demo was over. She had enough material for two pages in her coverage, and she could probably tie it into the Pentium chips, too.
Then Annette had found her, and they’d debriefed each other. Nora suggested she check out the Intel booth, and if she could corner Dr. Patel, she could drop Nora’s name to help things along. In return, Annette told her she’d heard that the CEO of Gateway 2000 was here at the conference, but they were keeping it secret until their big presentation tomorrow.
