Down Under Crater Billy

Gloria shook her head, brushing her tawny, tightly braided queue back over her shoulder. “Not at the same time. Not properly.”

There was a line you could hang your underwear on. “I see,” I said thoughtfully. “Then I suppose it’s business before pleasure. When do you get off?”

The smile she gave me could have easily turned my brain into the second pyrotechnic fondue of the day. “Hopefully not long after you get to my place tonight. After dinner around seven?”

I wasn’t about to let myself get run down and roped up as easily as that. I had my manly pride to think of, after all.

“Better make it six,” I told her. “At my place. I’ll fix dinner. We had a Code C in the main kitchen a little while ago. I wouldn’t plan on having lunch there either, unless you’re fond of Limburger Surprise.”

Her brown eyes narrowed. “That Kentford unit malfed?”

I nodded. “Vangy and her wristlet discombobulated the enties again. Gabe and Jeff are on it. The report should be posted by noon. Nobody was hurt, but it could have turned out a lot worse.”

“It made an exploding cheese, Boss,” Manny put in, looking up from a pad. He snickered. “The Brie went ba-looey.”

“Damn. We keep getting these goofy ISLs, and every time we think we got them plugged Vangy proves us wrong.” ISLs are Improbable Signal Leakages. Then she laughed. “So it made an exploding cheese. You’ve got to admit that’s pretty funny, no matter how you slice it.”

I scowled at her. When it came to where safety belonged in the overall scheme of things we wouldn’t see eye to eye if you glued our faces together. “Maybe you think so. I don’t.” I pointed at the item they were uncrating. “I sure as hell hope you take that damned thing a lot more seriously.”

She opened her mouth, probably to say something that would start a fight big enough to short-circuit on mode before it even began, then shook her head and gave me an exasperated grin.

“Don’t worry, I intend to.” She even sounded like she meant it. Anyone in their right mind would, but this was Gloria. As a tester she wanted things to fail, and she found spectacular failures the most interesting.

Still, it was time for me to back off a bit as well. “I sure hope so, Gloria. Do you think it can really be trusted?”

She turned to gaze at it. Anna and Manny had gone back to work uncrating the thing. “The theory is sound. The idea is brilliant, even beautiful. Mercedes-Motorola has already tested the hell out of it, but since it needs and they want Jameson approval, we get a chance to play with it.”

I bit back the impulse to say something about “playing” with the thing. Instead I made my position clear right from the start. “I hate the damned thing already.”

She faced me again. “I kind of figured you might, Dave. But I think the test setup I have in mind will meet your approval.”

“What is it?”

An impish grin and shake of the head. “Now you know what happens if I try to put a setup together with you looking over my shoulder.”

“We fight,” I admitted.

“The man’s a master of understatement,” Anna put in over her shoulder. Manny elbowed her in the ribs.

Gloria looped an arm around my waist and gave me a big hug. “Why don’t you make yourself scarce for a couple of hours, my love? When you come back we’ll have the testing setup in place. Then you can look it over, and if you have the slightest doubts about it we’ll work on it until you’re satisfied. OK?”

I had to admit that when it came to setting up tests for especially critical items like this her methodology was fairly rigorously worked out. It was her attitude that caused the problems and gave me indigestion more often than not.

“All right,” I agreed.

She gave me a kiss for being so cooperative, then whispered, “I really do want to keep you satisfied,” in my ear.

I knew she was still talking about her methodology, but not one I cared to have Manny and Anna observe.

History 101 continued:

Toward the end of the 20th century product safety testing was becoming an increasingly important concern. It had to be, because if some dolt managed to poke his eye out while trying to clean his contact lenses with his electric toothbrush there was a better than even chance that the courts would award him a settlement large enough to bankrupt the manufacturer.

All right, perhaps I’m being a tad facetious. For every company sued because there wasn’t a warning label on the chainsaw instructing the operator to not hold it by the end with the sharp whizzing chain, there was another company selling something that was badly designed, shoddily manufactured, inadequately labeled, and put out there with a criminal indifference to the safety of the consumer.