MOAB

Chapter 28: Galene @ 1.1x nhs

Chapter 28: Galene @ 1.1x nhs

“You’re trying to multitask, again,” sighed Greg.

“Women can multitask, men cannot,” she said airily. She was jogging on the treadmill and reading about a new programming language, while listening to an audiobook at the same time.

“No, that’s a myth. There is no neurological difference between a male and a female brain, i.e. you can’t multitask. Stop trying to do so.” Greg turned her audiobook and her treadmill off.

She huffed and puffed. She gulped down on the water.

“Don’t drink too much,” he said, trying to to pull the bottle away.

She slapped him, finishing it completely. “Why do people say that? I’ll do whatever I want.”

He shook his head and walked away.

She munched on a ginseng tablet. She decided to go all-in, trying out everything Greg did and taught her. It felt nice at first, popping in her mouth, but the aftertaste was weird, alkaline.

It was afternoon. They had half an hour of silent fighting, moving about their business without talking. Gods, had they gotten to that part of their relationship already? But Galene didn’t feel that bad. After all, he was trying to prove her her worth.

It still felt so unreal. Was it a promotion? She grinned. Would she get a bonus? She did a tiny happy-dance, but not too much cause Greg was watching. She needed a shower, but she didn’t want to leave him out of her sight. Was that dumb? That was dumb.

After a while they both stopped ignoring each other, and she sat herself down next to him, touching her butt on him.

“Okay, look. Let me explain the multitasking thing now that I’ve thought about it better. When I was a kid, we had this computer at our parents’ office. It was an Intel 386 processor, and it had a ‘Turbo’ button. When you pressed that button, it overclocked its 40MHz to 44MHz. But the problem was, that the games I played used the internal CPU clock, so if you went turbo, the game became faster. I didn’t have a great selection back then, so if I beat a game and wanted a greater challenge I’d use the turbo button to make it harder. But, as you very well know, an overclocked processor heats up, gets damaged, and might even lose bits of data during processing. So you have to use it in moderation.”

Gal touched her mouth, practically biting down on her knuckles not to laugh. “You mean Gigahertz.”

“Nope, Megahertz.”

Gal couldn’t keep it down, she laughed hard. “Gods, how old are you?”

“I predate the internet. Chew on that for a little while,” he said meaningfully.

Galene froze, wide-eyed, mulling it over. Her forehead glistened with sweat.

“Anyway, what you wanna do is use that turbo button sparingly. You focus on information you want to absorb, and train your mind to shift gears at the push of a button.” He mimicked the motion. “Push, you’re overclocked, sucking in information at three or four times normal human speed. When something comes up, a distraction, or simply your lift shows up, you depress the button and you’re back to normal. Burnout is a real risk here.”

Gal took a moment to respond, starting to mouth words and shutting up again. She pointed at him like a crazy person.

“You. Predate. The internet?!” she yelped in astonishment.