XVII
I awoke to the girls whispering and giggling across me. When they noticed I was awake, I got kissed by both and managed to pat them both on the ass. They jumped out of bed so I could get to the bath and padded downstairs. I pulled on sweats and a t-shirt and headed down to join them.
For some reason, despite common attitudes, the girls seemed to enjoy being domestic. Unsurprisingly, they were both still nude. They had me sit down, served me a cup of coffee, and chattered away while throwing some breakfast together. They sat on either side while we ate.
“As much as I appreciate the lovely scenery,” I said, “I think we still have a housekeeper and gardener who pop in now and then.”
They glanced down at themselves and broke into laughter.
Doesn't bother me,” said Jill, picking a stray cornflake off her breast, “what do you think, Jenn?”
“I don't care either.” Jennifer stammered, blushing down to her nipples.
“You do care,” I told her, “but Jill is corrupting you. Good work, Jill.”
We all laughed.
“Seriously, though,” I went on, “you should dress in something, even if its only pajamas or a housecoat, when downstairs. I you were seen, like this, rumors would be all over town in hours.”
I was a bit surprised that there had not been a parade of well wishers at our door already as my parents had been well respected members of the community. My coming home certainly wasn't a secret, I'd been seen in town. Maybe some had come by while we ran back down to Swansea, but it still seemed odd. I spent a good part of the day getting my network back online, checking the scanners, and tweaking software. Lisa would be handy now, most of the work she'd done it the Swansea house was with newer computers Conner had arranged for. I studied the notes Jill had typed up from Jennifer's binder. If we could get chip arrays made to Jennifer's specifications, the headsets could be made almost indistinguishable from a normal stereo headset.
I was back to testing and cataloging sensations when Jill yelled down the stairs that dinner was ready.
They'd gone all out for our first Sunday dinner at home, roast beef, a potato dish, something green and leafy, as well as a lettuce and tomato salad. I complimented them on the preparation and flavors. We made small talk over dinner, stretching out the conversation, even after we'd all eaten our fill. The girls cleared the table and dealt with leftovers and dishes while I ran down and brought Jennifer's notes back up. I was rereading parts of that while the girls puttered in the kitchen and finally brought coffee to the table.
Jennifer and I went over her ideas while Jill almost laid on the table to see and follow along. I explained my thoughts on a new headset-earphone combination. Jennifer was enthusiastic, Jill wasn't sure she saw the point. I explained, if we could tweak up the Bluetooth bandwidth, the headsets could be made wireless and less intrusive.
“The first problem I see,” I said, “is these chip arrays. I can't see those being less than astronomical in price.”
“The setup is the expensive part,” replied Jennifer, “making the dies for the chips. After that it's only a question of production. The more they make, the lower the unit cost.”
“That's just the problem,” I said, “if we want to keep the tech proprietary, we only need about ten pairs. That could be thousands of pounds each.”
“What if we had an application that they could sell?” asked Jill, “If they have another market our cost might drop way down.”
We all thought on that for a while, trying to find an application that didn't give away too much. We had to have two primary functions, something like read and write. The write function was the stickler, that was the part we needed to keep secret.
“Jenn,” I said, trying to pull an idea together, “your arrays have both read and write functions, Yes?”
“Yeah.” she replied, “For what we were doing the write was important for Jabberwokey and Jill's favorite toy. Read is for the mapping you're doing.”
“But if I understand the subchip design,” I said, “The read and write are essentially mirror images of each other.”
“Yes . . .” she trailed off, not seeing where I was going.
“Okay, how about this.” I started, “Remember early on I was producing images of neurons firing? That's how I tracked down the 'afterglow'.”
Both girls looked confused.
“What if we made it into a medical scanner? Less hassle than an MRI or CAT scan for looking at what the brain is doing and probably cheaper too.”
“But we would lose the write function.” said Jill
“Not if we could make the sensors work both ways,” I said, “so far we don't have a reason to use both at once. If the same bit could do both, and we kept the switching off the chip . . .”
“I get it!” said Jennifer, “we present a package for scanning, using a custom chip, then use the same chip with our hardware to get both read and write.”
“Exactly.” I said, “do you think you can work the changes into the design?”
“Probably be easier to redo the design from scratch,” said Jennifer, “might reduce the size by twenty five percent or more.”
“We can demonstrate the concept with the older scanner headset,”I said, “I'll just rework it without the write array.”
Jennifer grabbed the notes, flipped them to the blank side and was sketching. I was itching to get busy with a soldering iron but needed to do some sketching of my own. Jill seemed to be at a loss for what she might do. After a lot of back and forth, we settled on having her do what odd jobs would save us time. She was a dab hand with a soldering iron and reasonably good with my CAD program. As Jennifer and I worked, she made lists as we thought of things, wrote up our notes and jotted down things. I took her downstairs, showing her from my sketches how to take apart the old scanner headset, separate out the write modules and how to connect the scan modules together. I worked on rewriting the software and imaging routine. Jennifer stayed up stairs, working on her design sketches, the table being the best place for that.
By 3:00 in the morning, we were making more mistakes than progress and decided to get some sleep, sprawling on the bed and almost instantly falling asleep in our clothes.
We awoke at a little before 9:00, grabbed quick showers, and went back to work. Jill was to contact Conner and Lisa to ask them to come up for a day or two. Jennifer wanted a drafting table and appropriate tools. I wanted an up to date computer to base the system on and needed to talk to Mr. Farnsworth about a patent for what we were developing.
I drove to town, stopping first at the law offices. Mr. Farnsworth was in and available. Before I could tell him why I was there, he handed me a thin manila envelope to take to the bank. I would have access to grandfather's trust immediately. He also directed me to visit the funeral home to make arrangement for Mother and Father. I asked him about getting a patent. The firm had a patent attorney on staff, all I needed to do was produce preliminary drawings and de***********ions to start things moving. He promised to have someone look into companies who did custom chip fabrication, and let me know what they found. He seemed impressed by the idea, as I presented it. We shook hands and I left.
A bank officer took the papers, filled out a form and in short order my Grandfather's trust had been cashed out and deposited to my account. Next was the computer shop, where I ordered the computer I thought I needed and paid for it. He promised it would be ready in two or three days. Jennifer's drafting table was a box of boards and fittings, to be assembled. I bought drafting paper, two feet by three, and let the clerk fill a couple of bags with drafting tools. While I was in town, I stopped at the auto repair shop where I was told two or three days for the Anglia as well.
I arrived home early in the afternoon, The girls helped me unload. Jill and I wrestled the drafting table box downstairs while Jennifer made sandwiches. We gulped down the sandwiches and we headed back down with the tools and paper. Jill had the table halfway assembled and we quickly finished it, setting it in a well lit corner by the shelving. Jennifer was happy, claiming that working alone at the kitchen table drove her a little crazy. She was soon at work while Jill and I went to the garage for a table to become Jill's workstation. I strung a phone line downstairs because cell reception was poor down there.
After a busy few hours, we decided to stop for a dinner of warmed over leftovers, and to call it a day. Conner called just after dinner to tell us he'd be here in the morning, bringing a med student along who was specializing in neurology.
We shared an entertaining shower and gathered on the bed. Jill brought along the tablet, claiming she didn't want to miss out on the fun, but didn't want to get short changed either. They laid me on my back, and started to kiss me all over my body. I fingered their pussies as they sucked me hard, a quick process with both of them licking and sucking me. Jennifer straddled me lowering her pussy over my cock, her warm folds embracing me. She worked her muscles around me while Jill positioned herself behind her, reaching around to play with her breasts and nipples. Jill handed the tablet to Jennifer, telling her to push the button every time she came. Jennifer rode me gently, not trying to make me cum, but still bringing pleasure with her rippling muscles. Jill slid a hand down to flick Jennifer's clit. I just lay there, letting them do most of the work, holding Jennifer's hips. They were both beginning to breath heavily, Jennifer from the stimulation, Jill from rubbing her breasts on Jennifer's back and anticipation. Jennifer was beginning to moan in earnest, gasping every time Jill fingered her clit. Jennifer spasmed with a hissing gasp, followed by a scream of pleasure from Jill. I took over the breast Jill had abandoned for Jennifer's clit. Jennifer was rocking her hips on my cock as her moans again climbed the scale, aided by Jill fingering her clit. Jill left both breasts to me, fingering herself. Jennifer came again, screaming her release and brought Jill along, screaming out her own orgasm.
Jennifer was looking a little dazed as she recovered from her second orgasm and began to climb to her third. She was working her hips against my cock while I humped myself into he as much as I was able, mauling her breasts and pinching her nipples. Jill was working on both their clits While she nibbled Jennifer's neck and ears. Jennifer went ridged in her third orgasm, screaming as I unloaded my balls into her pussy and then she collapsed onto my chest. Jill screamed out her own orgasm, then screamed again, and after a couple of seconds, again. She collapsed backwards, the headset fell away from her head and lay gasping between my legs. With a sudden realization I snaked a hand between Jennifer and I where her spasmodically clenching hands had triggered three orgasms for Jill.
I tossed the tablet and headset on the floor, gently rolled Jennifer to one side, and sat up to check on Jill. She was breathing, but passed out. I pulled her up into my arms, laid back and roller her to the other side. I got an arm around each of them and drifted into a nap while waiting for them to recover.
I woke to Jennifer sucking on my cock, pulling deep into her throat where her throat muscles gripped me like a fist. I stroked her hair, gently encouraging her, as she pulled back for a breath and drove her mouth back down over my cock. Her muscles squeezed me repeatedly, milking my cock for all she was worth until I sprayed cum down her throat. She pulled back and started licking me clean. Jill soon joined her and when they were done, they both stretched out along my body.
“Are you okay?” I asked Jennifer, “that last one was pretty intense.”
She just snuggled closer, purring her contentment. I turned to Jill.
“Are you okay?” I asked her, explaining what had happened.
“I'll live,” she whispered, “but I'm done for the night. That really wrung me out.”
We cuddled and fell asleep. About 2:00 in the morning, we roused and took turns in the bath then, back in bed slept till 8:00.
We were relaxing over coffee at about 10:00, when Conner's Volvo pulled up, disgorging five people. He'd brought the whole team up as well as a young man who looked to be in his early twenties. I guessed he might be the Med student Conner had mentioned. I met them at the door while Jennifer poured cups of coffee and Jill started another pot. We got seated around the table, pulling a couple of folding chairs from a closet. Conner made introductions.
Cory Wells was a med student, doing his last year of classroom work, before starting his residency. Over coffee I explained my idea of a special purpose scanner for medical applications. Cory was enthusiastic, but thought most doctors wanted to see blood vessels and tissue damage, more than neurons firing. As a research tool, he thought it would be great but that severely limited the market. That took me down a peg, until Jennifer said the scanner could probably pick up blood vessels and soft tissue with a few tweaks. That perked me right up and got Cory excited.
We trooped downstairs where I fired up the computers and and brought up the programs needed. The reworked headset was ready as were my slimmed down programs. First I showed Cory one of the early imaged scans. I was demonstrating the ability to zoom around the image in three dimensions, pointing out the bright sparkles of active neurons as opposed to those just idling.
Cory all but jerked the mouse out of my hand and began zooming around the image, verbally identifying sections of the brain, with ever mounting excitement.
“I was skeptical,” he said, “but this is something brand new! Anything close to this requires radioactive dyes and tons of insanely expensive equipment.”
“Ready for a live scan?” I asked him, “that really shows off the system as it is now.”
I asked Claudia to be our test subject, and slipped the headset over her hair, asking for her favorite music. She named an American group from almost forty years ago. I took a moment to find an album online and started it through the earphones on the headset.
“How long does this take to make an image?” Cory asked.
“Not long,” I replied, “Claudia there is our subject, the scanner feeds into those computers, and here is our image.”
The image was very much like the first, except the sparkles of light seemed to dance and shift on the screen. Cory stared at the screen, eyes wide, with his mouth hanging open.
“That . . . that's . . . real time?” he finally stammered out, “from Claudia?”
“Yeah,” I answered, “you doubt it?”
“Its a little hard to believe,” he said, “still images, like that first one can take hours to build.”
“Claudia, what's your least favorite music?” I murmured into a mic.
“Anything rap,” she replied.
I did a quick search and cued up a random rap song.
“Cory, watch the monitor,” I said, “music will change . . . now!”
He gasped at the immediate change in the pattern, commenting that the affected area was the auditory cortex, the part of the brain that processed sound. Another area showed a lot of change as well, possibly her reaction to the music.
“James!” Claudia yelled, “if you don't put my music back on in five seconds, I'm going to shred your head set thing!”
I quickly changed the music back while Cory gaped at the changes in the patterns.
“Please,” he said, “tell me you're recording this.”
“Always.” I answered, “wouldn't do much good if we didn't.”
I let Claudia know we were done for the moment and she could take off the headset and get up. She wanted to listen for a little longer so I left the music playing and shut down the scanner. I pulled up the short recording and set it to play in a loop, handing Cory a pair of 3D glasses and made adjustments to let them be used.
He spent almost an hour playing back and forth through the recording, shifting the viewpoint about. Jennifer was working at the drafting table, Jill hanging over her shoulder, while the rest of us watched Cory. He finally sat back and removed the glasses, looking around at us.
“You guys are going to put a real crimp in the bottom line of the people who build MRI and CAT scan machines.” he said.
We went back upstairs, leaving Jennifer and Jill behind, for more coffee and discussion. Robert had stayed behind with Claudia as well. Cory was practically babbling and ideas for what he'd seen raced from his mind to his mouth. We gave him time to run down.
We had something, something big if we could bring it to market and protect ourselves from piracy, so big that we could all be insanely wealthy in the near future. Claudia and Robert joined us followed shortly by Jennifer and Jill.
Jennifer lay a big sheet of drafting paper on the table in front of me, pointing at various details saying if we vary this and that, making changes here and there, we should be able to image more than just the neurons. Most of the changes could be handled in software, but we would have to make a few minor changes to the scan array too. I asked how long they could stay, wanting at least Conner and Lisa for help with Software.
“Our games division can coast for a week or two, if need be,” said Conner, “What about you. Cory?”
“Oh God,” I have an exam next week,” said Cory, “I need to study, but I want to be here too.”
“Did you bring your books?” I asked.
“Yes,” replied Cory, “I thought I might be able to study a bit on this trip, but I'd be too distracted.”
“I think we can help with that.” I said, as everybody nodded agreement.
Cory brought his books in and I asked Conner to find digital versions. Lisa took Robert and Claudia over to show them the rooms above the carriage house and carry their bags up. They put Cory's stuff in a guest room. I went downstairs to arrange the scanner screens around the lounger and prepare that program with the first of the books Conner had downloaded. Conner had impressed upon Cory that this was also part of our research, but had to be kept secret for now. He was dubious, but agreed and he was soon sound asleep, absorbing the first text. We had found that slightly higher power made the implanted memories permanent. I added the other texts to the queue, setting up a manual start for each, to allow for breaks. Jill set up to change the headset to the specifications Jennifer had come up with until I stopped her, handing her a box of unmounted scan modules, telling her to build up a new headset. Jennifer quickly sketched out diagrams for her to work from while Conner and I worked on the software changes. Lisa came back and nudged me aside commenting with a grin, that Robert and Claudia would be back in a while. I set up to help Jill while Jennifer moved between our groups, keeping everything coordinated. By early evening, We were all done and ready for the first trials.
Cory asked to be the test subject, sitting up so he could watch the screen. I started the scan, noting an slight oddity in one area of Cory's brain. I gently moved a slider on screen, causing the sparkling neurons to fade and brought up another, making blood vessels spring into view. Cory stopped me, asking if I could zoom the image. He coached me to view a blurry splotch in the image that he studied briefly then told me to go on. I brought up the brain tissue itself until it covered up all but the surface blood vessels. I made more changes, showing the skull, and zooming in on one of the sutures, where the bones of the skull joined. I was amazed at the clarity we were seeing. I shut it all down and we looked at Cory for comments.
“I want in!” he said, “I'll drop out of school right now if I need too, I'll sell a kidney. Whatever you guys want, I want in.”
“Well, I don't think you should drop out,” I said, picking up one of his thick books, “'Skin conditions in Australia, common parasites'. I ***********ed a page at random and read the section title aloud. Tell me what you know.”
“But we haven't . . .” he trailed off and began to recite from the page as I read along.
“What the hell,” he breathed, “That's what we'll be working on next week!”
“You will find that you have a clear memory of everything in the books you brought along.” I said, “and if you can find online tran***********s of lectures, we can do the same for them.”
“But how?” he asked.
“That is part of what I was working on,” I said, “when it mushroomed into this, and more. If MI-6 or . . . well, name your favorite spook organization, finds out about some of the stuff we can do, they'd lock us up and only pipe light in on alternate Thursdays.”
“So, the medical scanner . . .” he trailed off.
“Is a way to use some of what we learned,” I finished, “to help people and make some money.”
We wrapped things up for the evening, and headed into town for dinner. That night, Jill took Cory to her room, leaving Jennifer and I alone together.