for one thing. And city people, like them, could get disoriented and
lost only a few hundred feet into the trees.
'The Montana Prison for the Criminally Insane has no TV, chocolate
milk, or cookies.'
'Okay, okay. Sheeeesh, I'm not a baby.'
'No,' Jack said, as he fished cans out of a shopping bag. 'But to a
bear, you are a tasty-looking lunch.'
'There's bears in the woods?' Toby asked. 'Are there birds in the
sky?' Jack asked. 'Fish in the sea so stay in the yard,' Heather
reminded him. 'Where I can find you easy, where I can see you.' As he
opened the back door, Toby turned to his father and said, 'You better
be careful too.'
'Me?'
'That bird might come back and knock you on your 6s again.' Jack
pretended he was going to throw the can of beans that he was holding,
and Toby ran from the house, giggling. The door banged shut behind
him.
Later, after their purchases had been put away, Jack went into the
study to examine Eduardo's book collection and select a novel to read,
while Heather went upstairs to the guest bedroom where she was setting
up -her array of computers.
They had taken the spare bed out and moved it to the cellar. The two
six-foot folding tables, which had been among the goods delivered by
the movers, now stood in place of the bed and formed an L-shaped work
area. She'd unpacked her three computers, two printers, laser scanner,
and associated equipment, but until now she'd had no chance to make
connections and plug them in. As of that moment, she really had no use
for such a high-tech array of computing power. She had worked on
software and program design virtually all of her adult life, however,
and she didn't feel complete with her machines disconnected and boxed
up, regardless of whether or not she had an immediate project that
required them.
She set to work, positioning the equipment, linking monitors to logic
units, logic units to printers, one of the printers and logic units to
the scanner, all the while happily humming old Elton John songs.
Eventually she and Jack would investigate business opportunities and
decide what to do with the rest of their lives. By then the phone
company would have installed another line, and the modem would be in
operation. She could use data networks to research what population
base and capitalization any given business required for success, as
well as find answers to hundreds if not thousands of other questions
that would influence their decisions and improve their chances for
success in whatever enterprise they chose.
Rural Montana enjoyed as much access to knowledge as Los Angeles or
Manhattan or Oxford University. The only things needed were a
telephone line, a modem, and a couple of good database subscriptions.
At three o'clock, after she'd been working about an hour--the equipment
connected, everything working-- Heather got up from her chair and
stretched.
