Chapter 11
In the morning when he woke up she was already up and had gone outside with the dog. She was walking around the property and Thor stayed right at her side, each step she took he was right there. He watched them for a while. He knew that he had made a good choice buying the dog.
He went back inside and started breakfast for the two of them. He decided to sit down with her after breakfast and make a list of the clothes she would need. They could pick them up at the mall. This would get her the clothes she needed to function and also give her a bit more interaction with the people of his time.
They ate breakfast with Thor lying next to her, his eyes taking in everything in the kitchen. The dog had fallen in love with Thea and took her protection as his full-time job. He told her that they would have to go to the grocery store after they finished shopping for her wardrobe. He had to explain what a grocery store was and why the food was not delivered automatically as they needed it.
They were at the mall before 9 o'clock and by 11 o'clock had picked up a complete wardrobe for her. Her wardrobe was heavily influenced by what Roy liked to see a woman wear. Thea did not like the shoes that were on display, as she claimed that they were poorly designed. She finally agreed on casual shoes and low-heeled dress shoes. Roy had to make several trips to the car, while she shopped, to carry out the items she had selected. She was constantly telling him that she didn't need all of the clothes that they bought. After they left the store, she told him that the people of her time only had 4 changes of clothes. There was no style; men and women wore the same style clothes.
The trip to the grocery store was a new thing for her. She had told him earlier that the nutrition pills were delivered automatically to the people. Grocery stores did not exist in her time. When she saw the huge amount of food that was available, she was astonished. She asked if they could buy one of everything and try them all. He had to explain about refrigeration and the availability of space in his refrigerator.
He was finding out that her education was going to take much more time than he thought originally. Things that he had grown up with and took for granted were all new to her and had to be explained. Because she was so intelligent, he had to explain everything in greater detail than if he was trying to explain it to a child.
When they got home he showed her how to hang up her clothes and where to put her shoes and toiletries. She kicked off her shoes and put on the shorts and a shirt that they had picked up at the mall.
He fixed lunch for them and cleaned up the kitchen after they had finished. When he had finished with the cleanup he went looking for her. She was in the bedroom that he used as an office. She was looking around the computer, obviously trying to find something.
"What are you looking for?" he asked.
"I cannot find the remote to turn on this TV."
"He laughed, "That's not a TV. That's a computer."
She looked at him as if she didn't believe him, "Why is it so big? In my time, the computers fit in your hand. Even the Supreme Ruling Council uses a handheld computer to run the entire government. I don't think that there's a computer this big anywhere on earth."
He sat down with her and for 2 hours showed her how to operate the computer. He showed her how to access the Internet and had to explain what the Internet was. He left her to get accustomed to the computer and went outside. He wanted to sit by the lake and think for a while. He tried to get Thor to go outside with him, but the dog just looked at him. He was not about to leave Thea.
As he sat by the lake he tried get make a list in his head what he had to do to assimilate her into his world. She was making great progress so far. He knew that this was because she was so intelligent. One of the few ways that anyone might become suspicious was by her speech. Her speech was a bit stilted. She rarely used contractions such as can't, won't, shouldn't and such. He knew that this was a minor problem.
The biggest problem they faced was her identity. He had to figure a way to get her an identity. It had to be iron-clad. It could not be one of the false ID's that are available around the border areas. If she was ever found out, he knew that the government would put her in a room and she would never see the light of day again. He tried to think of a way that he could get her an ID. Everything he thought of, after he dissected the plan, had a flaw that could get her found out.
After a couple of hours he went back to the house. Thea was still in the room using the computer. He could hear her clicking away at the key board. He poured a glass of iced tea for the both of them and went to the room to see what she was doing. As he walked in the room she pushed away from the computer and stared at the screen.
"Are you getting to know our way of computing?" he asked.
"Yes, I fixed it for you. It was programmed wrong. The problem was, that you had so many programs that it slowed down the computer. I found the source codes for everything and reprogrammed what you had on the computer and I added what should have been put on the computer by the person that built it."
She proceeded to show him what she had done. Although satellite connections are very fast, his computer was now instantaneous. As soon as she clicked a key, the screen reflected what had been programmed. As she had said, there was now only one program and it did everything perfectly. All of his work was still on the computer and she had saved over one gig of data, that he had on the computer before she reprogrammed it, Onto a 3 1/2 " floppy.
He stared at the computer, "How did you integrate all of the applications into one program? Just Microsoft Office XP is a huge program. A lot of the other programs can't talk to each other. How did you integrate them?"
"That Microsoft Office XP was programmed wrong. I changed it around and got it to work right now." "God, Don't tell Bill Gates that he designed his software wrong."
He sat down next to her and she showed him how the computer worked now. She was right! The computer did much more than it could have before. There was just one program now. It was lightning fast. The Internet was like one site. When she needed information, the computer would pull up the pieces of information that she requested from each site that contained that information.
He looked at her, "MY God, do you realized that you have taken our hardware and reprogrammed it to levels that we have never dreamed of? How did you save so much information to a floppy?"
She sneered at him, "I've only used about 1/5th of the capacity of the floppy."
A thought came to him. If she could access the data bases of the governments of the world, she could find an identity that was no longer being used. It had to be someone squeaky clean. It had to be someone untraceable. Someone that would never be looked for.
He told her what he wanted. She started typing in the parameters that he had dictated to her. In a second all of the data that had been the life of an individual flashed on the screen. The person whose data was on the screen was Ann Miller. Ann Miller was born in the United States. Her father and mother had taken her to live in England when Ann was 1 year old. Ann had gone to public schools in England and had attended a small college in Northern England. Her mother and father were killed in a private airplane crash in her senior year of college. Ann graduated from college with a degree in biology. There was no picture of her in a college yearbook as the offices that stored such records were destroyed in a fire. After college she came back to the United States and bought a car and started to travel around the country. They found this out by the credit card receipts. Her credit was excellent and she still had two credit cards active but with no outstanding balance. For some reason, Ann Miller had entered a convent and had died of an illness that was not noted on her death certificate. A nun that was a doctor had signed the death certificate and Ann was buried in the convent cemetery. The convent had never registered the death with the state. She had a Social Security number but had never applied for Social Security and had never contributed to the fund. They found a bank statement that showed she had $567.00 in her account. The only problem was her photo on her driver's license. When Roy pointed this out to Thea, she told him that she could change the photo on the state records.
Thea spent the next several minutes requesting duplicate credit cards, driver's license, and birth certificate over the Internet. The few records that could not be obtained on the Internet they requested forms for. Roy looked at Ann Miller's picture on her driver's license and took a picture of Thea with the same type of background. Thea changed the picture on the state records and her new identity was complete.
"Well, you are now Ann Miller. Thea is in the year 2538 only. Get
used to the name Ann Miller. If you ever make a mistake and answer to
Thea, you could be found out and get into trouble. In a few days the
records will start coming in and I'll show you what records you have to
carry and what records you should not carry."