21
Workshop
In the morning, after breakfast, Miss Williams escorted Kaitlyn out of the building, explaining that her session with Ammu would be held in the maintenance shop, where Kaitlyn would have access to tools and parts and the like.
“How have you been enjoying your stay so far?” Miss Williams asked as they walked. The weather being clear, she had chosen to take the long way around, leading Kaitlyn out through the front doors of the lodge and following a pathway that ran through a well-manicured garden.
“Oh, it’s been great!” Kaitlyn exclaimed. “I called Grandma Maggie yesterday right before dinner. Thank you for the telephone, by the way. She said everyone at the new place has been wonderful.”
Miss Williams smiled. “I’m so glad. You were taking very good care of her, you know. You should be proud of the job you were doing, but I understand why you were concerned about her.”
“I didn’t like that she was forgetting to eat when I wasn’t there,” Kaitlyn admitted. “But she’s eating now! When I called, she said she was having pot roast! And garlic mashed potatoes! She loves garlic mashed potatoes.”
Miss Williams laughed. “And what about the other students?” she asked. “Nobody’s giving you a hard time, I hope?”
“Oh, no! I played HRT Alpha with Rush and Sketch and Daniel last night. It was really fun! I killed Sketch a few times, and I killed Daniel a whole bunch! I couldn’t kill Rush though. Did you know he had a chance to get on a pro team this summer?”
“Oh, really?” Miss Williams asked, clearly surprised.
“Yeah. He had to give it up to come here. His dad made him, since it’ll look good for college.”
“I see,” Miss Williams said thoughtfully.
“Oh, gosh! Don’t tell him I told you, OK? I don’t know if I was supposed to. I just don’t want anyone to be upset if he seems unhappy. It’s not his fault. He’s really nice if you get to know him.”
“I promise, Kaitlyn, no one is upset with any of you. We’re very glad you’re here, and I’m hoping to get to know you all much better! Remember, I’ll be working with everyone else together today while you’re working with Ammu, so be sure to come straight back and join us when you’re done, all right?”
“OK,” Kaitlyn agreed. During breakfast, Miss Williams had shown them a small classroom that had been set up in one section of the big conference room off the main lounge, where she said they would be working on teamwork and leadership skills.
“And we’re here!” Miss Williams announced.
The maintenance shop matched the design of the lodge but was just one story. It sat well away from the main building on an extension of the long driveway, with three large, garage-type doors on the front, all painted dark green, and with a normal door on the far end. The middle garage door was wide open, and Miss Williams walked through it, followed closely by Kaitlyn.
“Hello,” Miss Williams called out. “Professor?”
“Yes, yes! Over here. Welcome!” Ammu replied, waving to them from the far corner of the garage as their eyes adjusted to the interior lighting.
“Wow! Nice!” Kaitlyn exclaimed.
“Do you approve, then?” Ammu asked. “You will have what you need here?”
“Oh, definitely!”
The inside of the building consisted of a concrete floor and three vehicle bays. The bay on the right held three lawn mowers, with a variety of trimmers and ladders hanging neatly along the right-hand wall. The center bay contained a large, solid table with several industrial-looking stools scattered around it, and the left-hand bay housed a well-stocked work area, designed for woodworking as well as mechanical maintenance.
A long work bench ran the full length of the left-hand wall and then turned the corner to run along the back edge of the left and center bays. The bench housed a high-end table saw, and Kaitlyn recognized a drill press and a lathe as well. Other than a few standing machines, the middle of the left-hand bay had been left open, with four saw horses stacked along the edge, obviously designed to allow the maintenance crew to work on larger projects there.
“May I?” Kaitlyn asked, pointing toward several closed cabinets, hanging both above and below the workbench.
“Please!” Ammu said.
“I’m going to leave you two at it, then,” Miss Williams announced, smiling over Kaitlyn’s enthusiasm.
“OK. Thanks, Miss Williams!” Kaitlyn called out, her voice muffled by the cabinet that her head was already buried in.
“It’s Christina!” she called back. “I told you, call me Christina!”
“Thanks, Christina!” Kaitlyn said, pulling her head out of the cabinet and grinning before turning and plunging back in, opening various drawers and cubbyholes and oohing and aahing over their contents.
As Christina started up the driveway, she heard Ammu begin to speak.
“Throughout human history,” he was saying, “there have been a select few among every generation who have been revered for their abilities…”
• • •
“OK, guys. This morning we’re going to talk about what it means to be a team.”
The classroom held six chairs, arranged in a semi-circle, all facing a whiteboard in the back of the room, where Christina stood now. Rush and Sketch sat in the middle, with Mackenzie on Sketch’s other side and Daniel next to Rush. Sam slouched in her seat next to Mackenzie and rolled her eyes.
“I myself have always found,” Christina continued, looking directly at Sam, “that being able to express one’s concerns productively is critical to a team’s success. You look skeptical, Samantha. I’d like to hear why.”
“Sorry,” Sam said, sighing and sitting marginally straighter in her chair.
“No, no. I mean it,” Christina assured her. “That’s exactly my point, in fact. I would never ask for your viewpoint if I didn’t want you to express it. That’s not direct communication.
“You rolled your eyes a moment ago, which implies disagreement or skepticism. My primary goal is to make sure we can all share our viewpoints openly and honestly, without reprisals and without ridicule. I realize that will take some time to establish, especially when we’re all still getting to know each other, but the only way to get there is to begin.
“So please, Samantha, tell me why you rolled your eyes.”
“Teams are stupid,” Sam said, shrugging.
At this, Mackenzie rolled her eyes.
“Wow, OK,” Christina said, grinning wryly. “I see I’m going to have my work cut out for me. Samantha first, and then Mackenzie. Let’s talk to each other. Samantha, why do you think teams are stupid?”
“Because they are,” she answered. “One person is always the best at whatever you have to do, so either that person just ends up doing all of it, which makes having a team useless, or they don’t do all of it, and then the other people bring your grade down.”
“I take it that has been your experience of teamwork in school projects?”
“Uh… yeah,” Sam said, raising her eyebrows for emphasis.
“OK, Sam, I hear you, and I understand why you feel that way. Mackenzie, I take it from your own reaction that you have a different perspective on teamwork. Can you tell us about your own experience?”
“Teammates watch each other’s backs,” Mackenzie said immediately. “You can’t be everywhere at once. Teams let you get things done in different places at the same time. Even if you don’t all have the same skill level, everyone can do something. The whole point of a team is that you don’t have to do everything yourself.”
“Sure, if you don’t mind it being done badly,” Sam shot back.
“Mackenzie,” Christina said, quickly heading off any reply, “can you give us, perhaps, a specific example of a team that you have found helpful?”
“My family,” Mackenzie replied easily. “My dad’s always back and forth on deployments, so we have to get things done at home without him. We share chores like cooking and cleaning and stuff, so that it all gets done. My youngest sister is only nine, but she can set the table, wipe down the counters, things like that. Everyone helps according to what they can do, so nobody has to do everything.”
“It sounds to me like those are two very different kinds of teams, with two very different experiences,” Christina said when Mackenzie had finished. “I think one important take-away here is that even a simple word like ‘team’ can mean different things to different people.”
Christina wrote ‘school team projects’ and ‘family team chores’ on the left side of the whiteboard.
“What other examples of teams can you think of?” She asked, addressing the question to everyone.
“Video games!” Sketch exclaimed.
“OK, tell me about video games,” Christina said, smiling. “What’s a video game team like?”
“Like, if there’s two doors in a room, Rush can watch one door, and I can watch the other one. Then nobody can surprise us.”
“That’s definitely an example of teamwork,” Christina agreed, and she added ‘video game teams’ to the list on the board. “Rush? Do you have anything to add to that, as our resident gaming expert?”
“It’s like Sketch said,” Rush responded. “You get each other’s backs. But I think it’s different from the other two things.”
“OK, good! How is it different?” Christina asked.
“Well, it’s like Mackenzie said, where you need your team because you can’t be everywhere at once, but at the same time it’s really like Sam said too, because if some people can’t pull their weight, the team’s gonna lose.” He looked over at Sam, leaning forward a bit to catch her eye across Sketch and Mackenzie, acknowledging her contribution.
He’s talking about me, Sam thought angrily. He thinks I’m not good enough to be here.
“Daniel?” Christina asked. “How about you? Do you have a different team example? It’s OK if you don’t have anything to add right now. I’m not trying to put you on the spot. I just want to get as many different perspectives as we can.”
“A band,” Daniel said quietly. “Or a symphony, for that matter. Or a choir.”
“A band,” Christina said, obviously pleased. “Yes! That’s an excellent example. Tell me about teamwork in a band.”
“Well, like Rush and Sam both said, everyone has to do their part, but every part definitely adds something important. Nobody can play a whole symphony by themselves. You need everyone, playing separately but together, at the same time, and then when you listen to it, even though you can hear all the individual pieces, together it’s still so much bigger than that, somehow, like a kind of magic…”
Daniel fell silent, a little embarrassed, but Christina smiled at him. On the left side of the board, she wrote ‘band/symphony/choir,’ and on the empty right side, she wrote, in all capital letters: ‘BIGGER - LIKE MAGIC.’
• • •
Back in the workshop, Kaitlyn and Ammu sat next to each other at the table in the center bay, a stack of oversized papers sitting off to one side.
Ammu had begun the morning by asking Kaitlyn to fix a simple table fan. In just a few short minutes, she had taken apart the entire mechanism, twisting and turning the pieces this way and that until she had located the problem: a thin wire that had broken away from the motor assembly. She had fixed the connection in no time, reassembling the device and presenting it to Ammu proudly.
Although he had provided her with several technical drawings of the fan’s inner workings, Kaitlyn had not consulted any of them. Now, Ammu placed one of those drawings on the table in front of them, where they could look at it together.
“This first illustration is an external multiview of the fan. As you can see, it shows us what the fan looks like, but only from the outside. We can see the front view here, and the side, and the top.” He pointed to each view in turn.
“Now,” he asked, “how much does this drawing help us to know how the fan works?”
“Hardly at all,” Kaitlyn said, frowning. “It only shows what the outside is supposed to look like. It doesn’t show us anything about the internal mechanism.”
“Good! Now, look at this one.”
He set the first drawing aside and pulled out a new one. This one was drawn at an angle showing part of the back of the fan, part of the right side, and part of the top all at once. Unlike the first print, which had been three separate drawings, this one showed a single view. In it, a significant piece of the back appeared to be missing, leaving the motor visible.
“Oh, hey, that’s neat!” Kaitlyn exclaimed. “You can see the motor right through the casing!”
“Yes!” Ammu agreed. “Very ‘neat’ indeed! This is a cut-away view, in which the mechanism is drawn as though some of the outer casing had been literally cut away. Now, how much does this one help us to know how the fan works?”
Kaitlyn frowned again and chewed at the inside of her cheek, thinking it over.
“It’s better,” she said finally, “but it still tells us more about how the motor sits inside the fan—like, where it goes—than it does about how the motor actually works.”
“Very good, Kaitlyn. I agree!” Ammu said, nodding his head, and Kaitlyn smiled at him. “Now, what about this one, hmm?”
With a bit of a flourish, Ammu unrolled a third diagram, and this time Kaitlyn caught her breath.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “That’s amazing!”
“This one,” Ammu said, smiling at her reaction, “is called an exploded-view drawing. It is called this, as you can see, because it is drawn as though the entire fan had been exploded apart, but with each of its pieces remaining completely intact, of course!”
Kaitlyn pored over the lines of the drawing, which showed every screw and bolt and wire suspended in midair, oriented properly relative to each other, but with a bit of space between each one, so that she could see from the drawing exactly how every single part fit together with every other one.
“It’s beautiful!” she exclaimed.
“Again, I agree,” Ammu said. “An illustration of this quality is, unfortunately, relatively rare. It takes great skill to represent the inner workings of a mechanical object in such a clear, and at the same time such a detailed, way.”
Kaitlyn couldn’t take her eyes off the drawing. It seemed as though someone had reached into her mind and drawn the exact way she saw the fan, without her ever having known that this was what she was seeing until it was right here, laid out in front of her.
“Now,” Ammu said, clearly sensing her excitement, “would you say that this drawing can help us understand how the fan works?”
“Obviously!” Kaitlyn answered immediately.
“Obviously,” Ammu agreed. “Good. Now that you have seen and understood this type of drawing for an object with which you are familiar, I would like to show you some more such drawings, to see whether you can identify them, OK?”
“Sure!” Kaitlyn said. She had been nervous at first about her time with Ammu, but now she was tingling with excitement as he unfurled another drawing.
“A car stereo!” she exclaimed without any hesitation.
“Good!” Ammu said. “And this one?”
“A computer printer!”
“Yes! And this one?”
“A cuckoo clock!” Kaitlyn said, laughing.
“Excellent!” Ammu exclaimed. “Yes! A cuckoo clock!”
Kaitlyn looked up at him with bright, shining eyes. She felt as though his drawings were opening up a whole new world. With drawings like these, she could do more than just fix things—she could build anything from scratch, absolutely anything at all.
“OK,” Ammu said, his expression growing more serious. “Next, I am going to show you several pictures of things, and I want you to see whether you can, in your mind, create for yourself a drawing like these for each one. Do not worry. There is no need to draw them on paper.” He laughed at her horrified expression, and then again at her relief over his reassurance. “I just want you to see them in your mind. Are you ready?”
“But how can I do that if I’ve never seen what’s inside it?” she asked.
“An excellent question! Your engineering skill is a pathway, as I have said. It is how your unconscious mind speaks to your conscious awareness. But what your unconscious mind knows, this is your special affinity. Clear your mind, and trust the insights that come to you. You know far more than you think.”
“OK,” Kaitlyn said. “I’ll try.” She took a deep breath and nodded, indicating that she was ready.
The first pictures were of simple things: a tape dispenser, a hand-held egg beater, a light bulb. With each new photo, Kaitlyn discovered that she could, in fact, see the diagram that corresponded to it. And the more she focused, the more embellished the plans became, adding various twists and swirls of light to indicate the movement of each part within the whole—and its essential purpose.
Ammu moved on to more complex things, and still the images came to her. A blender. A transistor radio. An electric winch. As the machines grew more complex, the very nature of the diagrams transformed, becoming more symbolic than literal, representing connections and interactions, until all at once she began to see the underlying flows of energy and motion that signified each one.
Almost as though she were in a trance, they poured forth to her now, unbidden, forming in her mind without any effort at all. A dishwasher, a car engine, a solar panel, a gryphon.
What???
She blinked and jerked her head, startled, but Ammu was beaming at her, a drawing of a mythological creature lying on the table in front of him: a lion’s body with the head and wings of an eagle. For just a split second, she had seen…
“You saw it!” Ammu crowed. “For just a moment! I know it! I could see it in your eyes!”
He was right, she had seen something, but she had no idea what to make of it—a circle of complex runes and lines, glowing in the air before her with perfect clarity for just a moment, until the very shock of seeing it had caused it to disappear.