Between discussions, Don and Helen took the others for a quick tour of the house, leaving Beth in a computer room which could interest even her. Even her rich Daddy had not managed create such a high-tech environment. It was not nearly as powerful as what she had at home, but the selection was better. Since she had made that selection herself, she felt less than smart, a new sensation for her.
The others went to Don and Helen’s music room. It had been created by Don, who described it as a snare, designed to entrap any talented musician of the female variety whom he could lure within its walls.
The room contained a grand piano, a harpsichord, an electric and a pipe organ, plus one beautiful little portatif pipe organ, just three ranks of pipes, very close to the performer. There were also many orchestral instruments available, not to mention the full set of instruments for a rock band.
It took the visitors a while to realize that the room could have variable acoustics depending on how some heavy curtains were set and whether a rug on the floor was rolled up or not. It was rolled up at the moment, to reveal a nice dance floor. But Karen pointed out the control booths and showed them that the room could also be considered a recording studio.
Ken had a music room himself, but could not offer to show it to Don. Helen could see it, of course. She’d be impressed by the number of diverse instruments, at least one of every instrument Ken could find, copies of medieval ones, historic renaissance ones and all those used today.
They also visited Don’s extensive library, filled with books on every topic. Ken had a good library himself, just as big and just as diverse, so he felt an immediate bond with the younger man.
Helen was clearly bursting with pride over her handsome and knowledgeable husband, though she claimed she would have married him for his portatif organ alone.
That may have been true, but Don insisted that he had taken great care to find the woman of his dreams, first choosing a university town with a high percentage of bright, well educated people, then spending a lot of time in bookstores, libraries and where music was played. He said he had been looking for someone with all of those attributes, bright, educated, literate and musical.
“My house was a trap, you see. There was no real social technology to help me find someone, so I went to a place full of likely candidates, then constructed a trap. The house was full of books. It was full of computers. Did I mention that Helen works with computers and programmed much of our original Project Match software? The house was full of musical instruments, in a very special room. Many a woman might find one of those things alluring, but few would find all of them.”
“So you used a trap in a pool of many candidates instead of having the social technology we lack. How did it work out?”, Drake asked. Drake, sometime rake in the days when Sally was just a friend, had a natural curiosity about this subject. “Did many girls pass through your trap before one couldn’t leave?” Sally poked him hard in the ribs.
“No sir, I was unbelievably lucky. I found the perfect girl the first time I brought one home. I wanted to marry her right away and shocked her with an early proposal. Didn’t I Helen? You trapped me. Did I mention that she is the perfect musician? I know of none better. Sorry Karen.
Karen pretended to give Don a dirty look, but she knew he was right. Karen played the piano brilliantly, in the ordinary way and sometimes as a percussion instrument as well, doing soft rock and light jazz. She played keyboards in a rock band and sang in a gritty contralto, but she was not the musician Helen was.
Sweet, lovely in a subdued way, shy, Helen was a classical musician, favouring organ and harpsichord, who sang sometimes in a beautiful high soprano voice.
Ken Green immediately envied Don for having such an apparently ideal woman, but Ken himself had the pleasant company of many women, and had either been skilled at selecting them or extraordinarily lucky.
Before deciding to seek the perfect wife, Don Walker had enjoyed the company and more of several women himself. In his “Woodlands Secrets” series of novels he had been quite specific about all that was needed for such successes.
“Cultivate her friendship after attracting her attention with a smile, then be very nice to her, treat her with affection and respect, then ask boldly but politely for what you both probably want. Be even more polite and respectful afterwards, so that even if you separate, she will have a good word to say about you to her friends.”
Ken had read those novels, always with a smile of his own. Much older than Don, Ken had pioneered such methods in the same North Vancouver places which Don had made famous.
But Don and Ken both knew something else. That there was no substitute for finding the right person to begin with. Ken had broadened his search by meeting and making friends with girls from many local schools. Don had not done this and had been correspondingly less successful.
While the three men were discussing not this, but matters of culture and intellect, and while the prodigious children worked away on their own projects, the women kept more on topic. They spoke of how bad things had been when they were growing up, and how much worse after some new but primitive social technology had begun to make finding the right person superficially easier, but actually more difficult. They spoke of how things might be, someday, when the advanced social technology they were working on took over. Someday soon, they hoped.
“It was impossible for me”, the formerly religious Ann said. “Some boy would have to have been been able to get past my parents and be willing wait for me to warm up to him. I could not search for one myself, and no one found me.”
“As Ann knows, I had too much luck getting lucky, so to speak, but no luck finding love”, Sally said in return. “The same could be said for my Drake. Ours was almost a marriage of convenience, between friends. I was pregnant and desperate, he was enough of a gentleman to step in to help. It was only later that we learned to love one another. I think people compatible enough to work together and be friends can grow together once they get together, becoming more compatible.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s true”, Sarah agreed, “and that is the problem right there. However compatible people are to start with, will they grow together or apart? Beth has had a hard time incorporating that rate of change into her software. Mostly for lack of empirical data.”
“What about Beth?”, Helen asked.
“Will her own system find her someone? And how soon?”
“Yes”, said Ann, who immediately saw the problem. “Let us suppose that her system can find her a one-in-a-million boy anytime she wants one. Being 13, she probably wants one. Would you let her get a boy that compatible at that young an age?”
“I was sexually active at 13”, Sally noted. “I wanted someone even if he wouldn’t be very compatible with me. What would have happened with a very compatible boy, I don’t know. For one thing, we’d not have broken up, like all my early relationships did. My whole life would have been different. Better, I guess. But even if I hadn’t let my body dictate my actions at first, I would have jumped into bed with a really compatible boy. Even younger, maybe. Twelve.”
“No way Beth gets involved that way with anyone at her age. Not until years later.” Sarah was adamant.
“Why not?” Sally chose to play devil’s advocate. “Why not let kids get together when they get together, if they find someone so extremely compatible?”
Sarah was not too surprised to hear these words come out of the mouth of the girl who had been labelled a slut in the school they’d both attended.
Ann wasn’t surprised at what her own best friend had said either, but she began to worry.
“Uh, we may have a little problem. We have been planning to start a private school, a high school. The idea was to teach the kids all about social technology, to prepare them to teach others, to spread the word, and to lead the movement in years to come. But, well, we have been planning to stock it with extremely compatible kids. I hope it will not turn out to be a hotbed of sexual activity.”
“Yes, but no, that’s my prediction”, Sally responded. Any that get together will stay together, no hot kids jumping from one bed to another. But each kid will have someone so compatible that they won’t want to hold back.”
“A high school”, Helen thought out loud, interested. ‘In New York, I guess, so you would have a big pool of possible students to select from.
What would it be called?”
“Social Tech High”.