System Architect

Two days later, Dad got a phone call. That in and of itself wasn’t unusual—he got plenty of requests for work at all hours of the day. He excused himself from the breakfast table and answered it in another room. When he came back, I could see in his face that something had happened. He sat down and stared at me for an uncomfortably long time without saying anything.

“Eddy,” he finally said, “do you have any idea who just called?”

“No?” I answered.

I could feel my nerves starting to fray.

“The local news called asking for an interview with you.”

“Why? What did you say?”

My heart was racing at this point. The news somehow figured out what was going on? Did they know about the time travel aspect? Surely not, otherwise they’d have asked about that.

“I declined on your behalf. Then they asked for my comment on you going to the community college. I said that you were and answered a couple other basic questions. I also explained that you want to focus full time on school so an interview would be a distraction.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. At least it was only about me going to school.

“Thanks,” I said. “I hope this doesn’t blow up too much.”

The story broke the next day. I didn’t know where the local news had found out about me given all of the classes I’d been in and all the other students there, but I assumed it was one of them or one of the professors. The story of the local boy who was going to college instead of first grade led to more requests for interviews from an ever expanding roster of news outlets. Mom and Dad had convened and decided to decline all of them with the same stock answer. My parents had to spread the same to their parents just in case they were contacted—and they were.

Around campus, I felt like a circus monkey for everyone to stare at and think there goes the boy from the news. Several people came up and tried to talk to me. A handful were curious students, but most of them were an assortment of busybodies who wanted in on the attention I was getting. I did my best to ignore them and mind my own business, but it was hard.

After a week of classes—and getting used to the workload—I decided to find a hobby or club in college to join. If I wanted to learn skills for the future, I may as well start now. I took an hour between classes to go through the options. There were some standard ones like debate or engineering and well as some more specialized ones for people from a specific area or background. Once I had looked through them all, I was disappointed to see that there weren’t any good options.

When I got home later that day, I looked for hobby groups nearby that I could join. There were tons of choices. So many, in fact, that my eyes glazed over just looking at them. It took time to narrow down the list to a few choices—like a week’s worth of extra time—but finally I had a handful from which to make my decision. I knew I could change my mind later if I wished—and I had enough time to do multiple before turning back the clock—but I needed to start somewhere.

Ultimately, it came down to three choices. The first option was woodworking. The group met up at a woodworking shop one town over from mine every Saturday afternoon. It looked like a good place to at least learn the fundamentals of making things with wood, which was something I wanted to cover for myself.

The second option was similar, but with the material being metal. Welding, grinding, lathes, and even smithing all wrapped into one. They didn’t meet every week but instead twice a month. I definitely wanted to do this one eventually, but the strength requirements and the overall danger of it made this option the least likely to start out with.

Finally there was sewing. I had a vague idea of how to sew from Mom having taught me many years in my past. My knowledge of the craft was so poor that I might as well have been a novice. Sewing was the least dangerous but also the most expensive option. I had enough funds for it now, but that wouldn’t last forever. This group met weekly on Monday nights.

I took the options to Mom that evening.

“Yeah… no,” she said of the metalworking one. “Definitely not that one. Woodworking’s a little dangerous, too, but not as much. What’s the last one?”

“Sewing,” I answered.

“Hmm,” she nodded. “Maybe sewing? You can always do one of the others later when you’re bigger.”

I nodded.

“Sewing might be expensive because of the cloth,” I added.

“True. I’ll see what I can do. It should be alright for now. Practice with scraps and then make something once you have learned more?”

“I can do that,” I agreed.

She nodded. I signed up for the group after dinner.

Dad went with me the first time. He agreed with Mom about the metalworking but thought that woodworking would have been a better choice. That was closer to his profession and he felt he might be able to teach me some of it. I reminded him that he could always do a project with me when I was older and done with school when I would have a lot more free time.

The group met in a fabric store about a mile outside of the downtown in a strip mall. The building looked like it had seen better days—not dangerous or in urgent need of repairs, just old. Dad parked his truck and held my hand. A bell tinkled when he opened the door for me.

The inside of the store smelled odd. It was a strange combination of dyes from the fabric, the fabric materials, and the ancient carpet on the floor. Visually, the store was stuffed with shelf after shelf of all sorts of fabrics. I saw a golden gossamer fabric that looked like it might drift away whenever someone walked by, a sturdy calico, an entire rainbow of felts. I’d never seen so much fabric in my life!

“Do you folks need some help?” a woman asked.

She looked older than my grandparents.

“I heard there was a sewing meetup tonight?” Dad wondered.

“Yes,” the woman smiled before pointing to a gap in the bolts of cloth. “They meet in the room over there.”

Dad nodded and led me through the narrow passage between shelves—a definite fire hazard—and into an open space beyond. The room in front of me had a handful of tables with sewing machines and several chairs scattered about. There were about as many people in the room as there were sewing machines—though only two were being actively used when I walked in. The rest of the people—who were mostly middle-aged and older women—were seated and chatting. Two of them looked up when we entered.

“Hello,” Dad greeted the woman closest to us.

“Hm?” she responded.

“Is this the, um…” he began.

“The sewing club?” she finished. “Yes, this is it. Will you be joining us?”

“I won’t be,” he said, “but my son, Eddy, will be. I’m just here to observe and help him out if he needs it.”

“Oh! How wonderful!” she exclaimed. “It’s always so good to see the young ones join us—and a boy no less! You look familiar, have we met before?”

She extended a hand for me to shake. I offered mine in return. The shake was… awkward—my hand too small and her grip like that of a princess.

“This is the first time we’ve met, I think?” I said.

“Oh. I must have been mistaken. Have you sewn anything before?”

I shook my head. Though it wasn’t fully true, it may as well have been.

“Let’s start with something easy…”

The woman—Elizabeth, I later found out—had me start by threading a needle and tying a knot at the end of a long piece of string. She gave me a thimble to keep my fingers safe from the point of the needle. Then she gave me a button and a scrap of cloth to work with. My first task was to attach the button. She showed me how to begin and what to do before undoing it all and letting me try.

It was tough going initially, but I got the hang of it after I completed the button for the second time. Then it was on to showing me how to pick stitches apart with a tool so that I could redo the button a few more times. After the fifth picking and restitching, it was time to go home. I thanked Elizabeth for the help and followed Dad back to the car.

“What did you think?” he asked.

“It was interesting,” I decided.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I know I’m just starting now… but in the future, knowing how to make clothes would probably be a good skill to have.”

“True.”

“And the projects I work on should give me some decent experience. I hope.”

“Did the buttons give you anything?”

“Just a handful together, but next time I should learn how to stitch two pieces of fabric together. Then maybe start a real project soon after!”

Dad smiled.

When Mom went with me the following week, she spent the hour or so chatting with the group members while Elizabeth helped me learn how to hand-stitch. There were several ways to do it—and there were more steps to the process than I thought going into it.

The first thing I had to do was to measure in from the edge of the fabric and mark it with a white disk-shaped crayon in several spots. Then I had to run a line with a ruler along those measurements. When I did this to both pieces I was going to stitch together, I needed to decide what sort of stitch pattern would be best for the fabric I was joining together and the amount of stress it would be under during regular use. Elizabeth showed me a handful of the most common ones and made sure I did each of them several times before she let me move on to the next one.

By the end of September, I was judged sufficiently skilled that she suggested I begin a project. There were several options—clothing for myself, clothing for a doll, a blanket, and a few other ideas. I chose the blanket in the end. If I made clothing for myself, I would grow out of it before I was even done making it; and if I made clothing for dolls… well, I’d need a doll to put it on. A blanket was a useful item that would see me through many years—and hopefully doing a good job on it would be worth a good amount of experience.

I purchased the fabric and filling material after consulting Elizabeth—and my own wallet. She helped me design it and run the math. Once everything was in order, I noted down all the measurements and began to mark and cut the fabric to size. I knew the project would take a while even if I worked on it at home as well, but that was ok with me.

I didn’t have too much time to pursue the blanket project. I was able to spend a couple hours a week on it; however, most of my time was still dedicated towards my studies and my quests. With midterms coming in only a couple of weeks, school held my attention above all else.

I walked into the first midterm two weeks later. The hubbub around my age and being in college had died down enough that I was able to go from one place to the next without getting stopped by someone. The other students were used to the fact that I was around and they were friendly—in a that’s a cute puppy sort of way.

It was being held in a much larger classroom than the usual one to give the test-takers enough space to limit cheating opportunities. I found an open seat and occupied it. The rest of the students wandered in right up until the time for the test to begin. The proctor handed out the test papers to each person before clearing his throat.

“You have ninety minutes to complete the exam in front of you,” he said. “When you are done, you can raise your hand or come up to the front and hand your exam to me. Any questions?”

The proctor waited for several seconds then continued once he was sure everyone understood.

“Alright, you may begin.”

I started by reading the instructions just in case. There were no special bonuses for reading through them usually—and that was true for this exam as well—but I’d heard of them so it made sense to check just in case. I wrote my name on the top of each page as I went through question by question.

The exam wasn’t too difficult—I’d studied enough and the material itself was more foundational—so I was able to plow through the questions quickly. That some of the multiple choice questions answered other ones later in the test made me smile. Then I got to the more free-form part of the exam. These questions necessitated a couple of paragraphs each of calculations and written explanation.

When half of the allotted time had elapsed, I was done with the test. I spent another 10 minutes going over all of the questions again just in case I missed anything—I had not—before standing up and walking to the front. I wasn’t the first to finish, but I was amongst the first. The proctor gave me an odd look but said nothing when he took the exam from me.

Test-taking was a skill I’d always excelled at. The mix of pressure and focus always seemed to bring clarity for me for whatever reason. On the other hand, going back and fixing mistakes was something I was loath to do because that focus evaporated as soon as I did. This, of course, meant that, while I almost always did well on exams, I also never got a perfect score either.

When I left the room, I went to grab lunch and look over the material for the next exam. I had three more that day and another two the following day. I had faith that I would make it through the gauntlet but was annoyed that I’d not been given any quests around doing well in the exams. Maybe whatever governed the system didn’t see there was enough of a challenge in them to give it to me or maybe it was because I already had a quest for school and that would have doubled up. That was something I noted in the back of my mind to investigate in the future.