Eradani and Dr. Richter followed Tompkins through his house. At some unidentifiable point it stopped being a home and became instead a fully furbished design and manufacture suite. They were shown room after room of computers, drafting tables, milling machines, lathes, workbenches, Computer Aided Manufacture equipment and chairs.
It was all tremendously impressive, but also tremendously daunting. Neither of them had any idea what they were supposed to do with all this equipment that Tompkins was so proud of, let alone how to use it.
The whole set-up seemed totally surreal to Eradani. Just a few days earlier she had been happily trundling along on her physics course; writing the odd essay here, doing the odd exam there, writing down a few pages of notes every day. And now look at her. She was being pulled into this mad scheme of Tompkins’ seemingly without any choice. She really had no idea if she was doing the right thing or not. She wanted to phone her parents up, or perhaps her sister, or even a close friend and have a good, hard talk about her situation, but she just didn’t know what she would say to them. She knew her parents were tremendously proud of their little university girl and the last thing she wanted to do was disappoint them. She didn’t want to take away their dream of attending her graduation ceremony, watching her being decorated by one of the top universities in the country. She’d rather wait and be sure she was in a good, sound position before she informed her parents.
Dr. Richter, on the other hand, couldn’t have been happier. He had somehow managed to get out of his poorly paid, infuriating job as a lecturer and land himself a glamorous, well-paid mega-career that would set him up for life. He had a new spring in his step and he would soon be spending much of his time on eBay with a big grin on his face.
They walked on. Tompkins seemed in no great hurry to let them know what his complicated equipment was for. He would hurry them past room after room, vaguely describing what was in there as they swept by. They nodded and said ‘yes’ and tried to give the impression that they knew what was going on. This room, material analysis; that room, rubber and vulcanisation. All highly technical and all totally dazzling to Richter and Eradani.
Without warning, Tompkins suddenly stopped at one of the doors. This one was slightly different to the rest; it was made of better quality wood, its shine was sharper. Clearly, this room was of some significance.
‘This room,’ said Tompkins, suddenly very excited at something, ‘is of some significance. It is the finest room in the residence. Its contents are valueless.’
‘You mean priceless,’ suggested Eradani.
‘I know what I mean,’ snapped Tompkins, catching them off guard with this unexpected outburst. He calmed down. ‘This,’ he continued, ‘is the largest private library in the country, possibly in the world. It is at least four hundred years old, potentially much older even than that, and has a copy of every noteworthy book published since then - with the sole exception of ‘The Half Empty Cupboard’ which I cannot seem to find a copy of anywhere.’ Eradani remained silent. ‘Please, take a look.’
Dr. Richter followed Tompkins’ outstretched arm and opened the door. He walked into one of the most impressive places he had ever seen. The sheer scale of the room was beyond comprehension. It stretched almost as far as the eye could see in all directions and seemed far too large to be contained in Tompkins’ house. It was organised on a three-floor system, with the two upper levels forming a duet of galleries from which you could survey the scene below. The floors, walls and pillars were crafted from the finest antique rosewood and the ceiling was a masterwork of intricate vaulting.
Eradani entered behind Richter and gasped.
‘Like I said,’ continued Tompkins, ‘the finest room in the building.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Richter.
‘Say nothing, then,’ said Tompkins. ‘This library is at your disposal. You may use it freely and without restriction.’
‘That’s... great,’ said Richter.
‘But for now, we must carry on. There is much still to show.’ Richter continued staring at the vault of books as Tompkins turned away. Eradani tugged at his pullover. Reluctantly, he turned and followed her.
Tompkins led them further into his inexplicably large house, again hurrying past door after door. As before, he abruptly stopped at one of them. This time, though, it was a door of no real distinctiveness.
‘I must show you this room,’ he announced. ‘It has a door of no real distinctiveness but I think you’ll find it just as interesting as the library.’ He eased open the door and waved them through with his walking stick.
‘It’s all spaceships,’ observed Eradani after a brief pause.
‘Indeed,’ said Tompkins. ‘Please, peruse.’
The room itself was smaller than the others they’d seen, but no less striking for it. It was filled wall to wall with models of spaceships of every shape and design imaginable. Where there were no models, there were computers with fully rendered 3d models rotating about on the screen. The walls were covered in posters, some hand-drawn, some photographs and some computer generated. The room was a shrine to every space vehicle ever thought up.
‘Each one a specially commissioned design model. As you can see, a lot of them are the creations of over-active artists’ imaginations, but some of them are feasible designs.’
‘But what’s it all for?’ asked Eradani.
‘We hope that one of these will form the basic blueprint for the ship we will be launching. The idea is that you will modify one of these many designs for your purposes, thus cutting back drastically on the design process. We want to get to the manufacturing stage as quickly as possible.’
Dr. Richter looked around the room. He spotted a Juliet fractal1 hanging on the wall, but he was no big fan of fractals so he concentrated on the rest of the room’s contents. The work that had gone into this collection must have been phenomenal. He estimated there were at least five hundred models, possibly many more. Something about this made him feel a bit uncomfortable. He wasn’t quite sure why, but...
‘What if we’d decided not to accept your offer?’ he asked Tompkins. ‘Would this have all gone to waste?’
‘That was never an option,’ answered Tompkins coolly.
‘What wasn’t? Us turning you down or you abandoning the project?’
Tompkins turned away from him curtly, facing out of the room. ‘We must begin work immediately. We have no time for idle chit-chat. You may use all the facilities in this building freely, and you may hire whomsoever you wish. Now, if you will excuse me, I have some business to attend to.’ Without waiting for a response, he marched off down the corridor briskly, obviously capable of walking perfectly well without using the hideous green walking stick he always had about him.
Eradani looked at Dr. Richter. ‘What do you think he meant?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Dr. Richter. ‘But for the money he’s paying us, who cares?’
1. A fractal is a mathematical curve or surface created by recursive2 techniques and repeated subdivision.
2. The term recursive2 is applied mathematical or computational operations that refer to themselves endlessly3 (or until some criteria is met).
3. It is easy to produce endlessly repeating loops when dealing with recursive2 procedures, so care should be taken.