The Next First Bit

Conrad Munroe’s parents had a very difficult childhood, or so they said anyway. They travelled around in vehicles powered by explosions, they lived during a time when getting partially-sunburned was considered in some way beneficial, at the very least superficially, and they derived the majority of their entertainment from glass boxes filled with batteries which could not be properly disposed of, and could only be recycled into more batteries which could also not be properly disposed of. At the same time, people decided that having nuclear weapons lying dormant in silos and submarines was a highly inadvisable way to secure world peace, and they proceeded to attempt to disarm and somehow get rid of everyone’s nuclear weapons. It resulted in a terrifying standoff (again) and very nearly ended in disaster (again) but ultimately the attempt succeeded, and everyone then spent lots of time figuring out a way to pass the issue of world peace off to the next generation. Conrad’s parents also lived through the period of time when everyone was impassioned to do something about climate change. They ‘did something’ by getting rid of all their explosion-powered vehicles, and replaced them with battery-powered ones that recharged using the wholly radioactive power of the sun. Conrad had a difficult time believing his parents’ stories.

It was perhaps this difficulty, and a fascination with change and progress, that led Conrad to an interest in history, and it was most certainly his interest in history that led him to be an engineer. He was enthralled by inventions and designs and innovation; particularly because inventing and designing and innovating seemed fun and easy to him, and also because of the clearly marked effect that it could have on the course of history. So when Conrad enrolled in college, he had no trouble selecting a major, and no trouble excelling in his major. Conrad did well enough, and easily enough, that he was able to get in lots of trouble between classes, and was simultaneously a beloved pupil, and a complete scourge; he managed both under assumed names, and was able, as a result, to graduate twice, with degrees in engineering and mechanopology (a field he invented with the help of a pseudo-anarchist professor-friend, and a slight amount of coercion, provided by a leaflet campaign). 

Conrad met Emily Hamilton sometime towards the middle of college, and their love-hate relationship began almost instantaneously. Their first conversation went like this: Conrad told Emily, who was walking past him in the opposite direction, that her hair looked nice, then Emily kissed him; before that point, nobody had noticed that she did, in fact, have eyes, hair, and a face, let alone complimented them. In fairness, Conrad had a very difficult time not noticing Emily’s hair; at the time, it was glowing brightly and humming slightly; the effect was spectacular, and the compliment honest, if trite. Their next conversation was slightly less successful. Conrad spent the majority of it under a desk, trying to avoid being pelted by large heavy books. Emily spent the majority of it trying to pelt Conrad with large heavy books. 

Emily spent a large amount of her childhood in a state of perturbation over the lack of compatibility between computers and plants. She spent a large amount of her college-years in a state of suppressed-ecstasy because someone named Bernard McSimmons (Conrad using a pseudonym) had built a working prototype of a plant-computer hybrid: the Plantpeuter, [patent pending] which would be feature in a number of news-spots, but would fade into casually-embarrassed exile after a pair of Vegetative Ethics majors wrote a very convincing essay comparing the Plantpeuter to a person with slices of cheese-substitute embedded in their heart, lungs, and liver. Vegetative Ethics had, until that point, been a heavily relegated field 0f study, primarily considered a pseudoscience by actual scientists, and a ‘wispy, ragged attempt at gutsy, ham-fisted, right-brained, properly dangerous pseudoscience’ by all but two pseudoscientists (the two seemingly-thoughtful pseudoscientists would have likely agreed with their colleges, but they had been placed in a vegetative state by an experiment involving rubber balls and hyper-caffeinated toddlers. 

Emily was the most precocious vocational-student to come through her college. It wasn’t saying much; she didn’t go to a terribly-esteemed college, but it was saying something. If only it had said so just a bit more loudly. Emily majored in Troubleshooting with an emphasis on Iteration, (another one of Conrad’s made-up majors) and she was the top of the class because there were only two other students in it, and they spent most of their study-time getting drunk or trying to steal the hubcaps off the dean’s car. She would have been top of the class anyway, though, because she was the one who taught it. Shortly put, Emily was the first person to teach themselves advanced engineering without actually knowing anything about advanced engineering. 

Most of her research was conjecture, most of her method was slapdash or brutal, most of her time was spent taking apart simply everything, and trying to put it back together in only a single piece. By the end of her sophomore year, each and every one of the campus vending machines was made in no small part, from all of the other vending machines. The same could be said of the air-conditioning system. Emily was suspended after a Mechanical Politics major pointed out that she was attempting to seed communism in their appliances, and, in doing so, coined the term “expertly-disassemble-and-grab raid” in an attempt to describe Emily’s occasional forays from her dorm-turned-workshop. 

She was placed in detention with one of Conrad’s aliases, and after a long discussion, they decided to drop out and get jobs at ACRONYM because they were always looking for decent engineers. 

Besides, Emanuel Stevens (actually Conrad) said, it was frustrating to be held back by convention, and boring to go through college for a third time. When Emily was confused, Emanuel (still Conrad) explained that Emily was being held back by convention, and he, Emanuel Stevens, (just Conrad) was going through college for a third time. Emanuel also attempted to explain that there used to be United States Coast Guard ships named Hamilton and Munro. Emily failed to see the correlation between her and Emanuel, because he’d failed to admit that his name was Munroe, and had neglected to mention the slight difference in spelling. By the time Emily had enough information to understand the correspondence, she’d forgotten completely that Conrad had attempted to make one.

They dropped out together the next day. Actually, only Conrad dropped out; Emily was expelled after the dean discovered that his phone was actually made from parts of all the other phones on campus. ACRONYM was very, very glad to have them. Emily and Conrad were glad to be had; even if they didn’t completely fit in at ACRONYM, they fit in more than they ever had done.