Page 7 of Protecting the Nerd
“I can give them the code to let them in, then rearm it from the outside and let Julius have a go at it.”
“Brilliant. You just made a friend in Julius, let me tell you.”
His smile faded. “I doubt that, but tell him good luck from me. The access code is 8291, press the red button, then 2916, and press the green one.”
I repeated the numbers in my head twice to make sure I’d memorized them. “Got it.”
“But I’ll remotely disable it now so they can enter. Let me know when to turn it back on. I’ll reactivate the front door so Julius can have some fun.”
He had designed a system he could operate remotely with multiple sectors that could be armed or disarmed separately? Damn. “I’ll keep you posted on his results.”
“Cool.”
York studiously avoided looking at me. I couldn’t quite figure him out yet, but I would. Like Julius, I loved a good challenge, even if mine usually differed from his. “I’ll step back out, seeing as I’m not allowed to see what you’re doing.”
“I’m not working on anything secret right now.”
“No? Then what’s that on your screen? That seems pretty serious to me.”
He looked at his screen as if seeing the symbols for the first time. “Oh, that? That’s just… I like to do math when I’m trying to solve a problem. It helps me relax and focus on something else.”
That helped him relax? Jesus, how smart was he? “It appears complicated.”
“It’s a stochastic partial differential equation, basically advanced calculus.”
“Very advanced, I would say. Not like anything I ever did in high school.”
Finally, he met my eyes with a somewhat puzzled expression, as if he were trying to determine whether I was serious. “I suppose so.”
“What’s your degree in?”
“Which one?”
Of course he had more than one degree. “All of them?”
“Erm, I have a bachelor’s in electrical engineering, a master’s in mechanical engineering, and my PhD is in controls.”
“Controls?”
“Control systems are closed-loop systems that measure something and automatically adapt their reactions based on a set outcome for the desired measurement. The easiest example is a thermostat. You set it to seventy degrees. When it measures the temperature below that, the heating will turn on and stay on until it reaches the desired temperature, and then it shuts off. Most modern technology contains some form of control engineering, like the cruise control in cars or the autopilot of a plane.”
“Gotcha. And that involves math like that?” I pointed at the screen.
“It can, but this isn’t an actual problem I’m working on. It’s practice, a way for me to relax my brain.”
“I go for a run when I want to relax.”
“I only run when I’m being chased.”
“You still seem in pretty good shape.”
He shrugged. “Genetics. I take after my father.”
Father. Not dad. Interesting. “You don’t work out at all?”
“Not if I can help it. I was never into sports. That was always more my brother’s thing.”
Should I tell him? Or would that be stepping into a minefield? Something was off, but if I didn’t, it might come back to bite me in the ass. Besides, I’d always been a straight shooter. “Would that be Essex Coombe?”