Forever Yours
5
The Challenge of College
“WOULD YOU BE interested in a little playtime tonight?” Henry asked Chastity after their lunch with Luke and Isobel. “We might not have much time for entertainment after classes start next week.”
“Worried about your creative juices getting backed up? Get used to having a girl in your bed this summer? Yeah. I’m up for that,” Chastity said. She linked her arm in his and headed toward his little car.
“You know it wasn’t like that,” Henry said. “We only got together like that last weekend. Then we said our goodbyes.”
“Henry! No! I didn’t know that. When I saw her at work, she was all goo-goo-eyed about how nice you were and how she loved spending time with you. That bitch!”
“Hey, it’s okay. I really did have a good time with Avery. I even feel more fit since I’ve been out hiking every weekend. It just wasn’t a summer of sex. And I’m fine with that.” Henry opened the car door for Chastity and made sure she was seated and had nothing hanging out the door before he closed it. “Shall we get a room at the motor inn?”
“No. Let’s go to my place. You know I managed to get my own apartment this month.”
“We really haven’t been hanging out enough!”
“Yeah. Well, now we have a whole summer of sex to catch up on!” Chastity said. “Don’t worry, though. Even though we’ll be working hard in school and our jobs, I’ll still make time for you. You just need to speak up, you know?”
They got to Chastity’s modest apartment where Henry met her two cats. A short time later the lovers were spread naked on her bed. Little kisses led to petting and Henry found himself responding to her sensuous body as he had after the prom.
He spent time worshiping between her legs with his tongue and then kissed his way up her body until they were lip to lip again. She guided his cock into her and soon he was seated deep inside.
“This is nothing like anything I had this summer either,” she said. “Goddess! You fill me so completely.”
They rose together and then drifted off to sleep next to each other for a short nap.
Henry awoke before Chastity and contemplated their strange relationship. Their night at the prom might have been the previous night, as comfortable as they were with each other. But Chastity maintained she was not girlfriend material and he was determined not to treat her as if she was at his beck and call.
His petting of her while she slept and kissing her nipples soon had her stirring. He found her sex to be well-lubricated and moved between her legs, which opened easily for him. Then he was in her again. Chastity didn’t open her eyes, but she kept pace with his thrusts, moving against him until he started coming. Chastity raked his back with her nails.
“Oh, fuck! What a way to wake up! Your come is dripping out of me. You must have poured a gallon into me.”
“I’m sure those urban legends are exaggerated,” Henry laughed. “No guy actually produces that much. You just have a tiny space to put it.”
“Especially when it’s full of your cock! Next time, I’m waking you up.”
“Please do. Any time,” he laughed.
“Let me up. I need to use the john. I don’t think we’ve had a whole summer’s worth of orgasms yet.”
“Want to get some dinner? I’ll text Mom and let her know I won’t be home.”
“We can order in.”
Henry sent a text to his mother to let her know he was staying out. Then he checked Chastity’s address and called a nearby restaurant to order food.
“I should get myself an apartment,” he said when she emerged from the bathroom. She’d stayed naked, so he had no problem remaining that way, too. “This is nice. And your kitties seem to like it a lot.”
“They love the window ledge. I’ll give you the name of a great rental agent. She got me mine and I’m sure she’d love to work with you. So to speak.”
“Are you arranging a rental agent or a date?” Henry laughed.
“Yes. Personnel recruitment is my specialty.”
Henry rolled out of bed earlier than he intended Sunday morning. Early in the morning, Chastity had told him he should go home, but he’d been mostly asleep and didn’t move from the bed. He’d nearly forgotten that he was picking up his parents for the university president’s orientation address at 9:30. Chastity was grumpy and just waved at him as she rolled over and went back to sleep. They might not have gotten an entire summer’s worth of sex in overnight, but they’d tried hard.
The hour-long orientation event was filled with information about the university’s history, commitment to academic freedom, and striving for excellence. The president only spoke for about twenty minutes out of the hour, but the program was tightly run and began and ended precisely on time.
“I guess we go different directions now,” Henry said to Ryan and Sylvia. “Honestly, if you guys finish and want to go home, just text me. It seems like a long time to hold you here just for a family orientation and resource fair.”
“Oh, it will give us a chance to tour the school and see how much it’s changed since we were here,” Ryan said. “What’s your schedule?”
“Since I’m living at home—thank you very much for that—I don’t have anything after my computer science school welcome and orientation. That ends at two o’clock,” Henry said.
“We’ll plan to meet you at the car about 2:30 then,” Sylvia said. “That should be plenty of time to see what we want to see. We don’t need to tour any dormitories.”
They split up and Henry met with people in the School of Computer Science for the first general meeting of the year. He reminded himself that these were all freshman students and he’d meet some of the older students when classes started in a week.
The School of Computer Science (SCS) was huge. In addition to a general computer science degree, the school offered degrees in artificial intelligence, computational biology, human-computer interaction, and robotics. There were over a hundred students enrolled in the Machine Learning Department, which was where the AI program was based.
The computer science luncheon and introduction was crowded with over three hundred new students. They included what Henry assumed was a typical array of computer geeks. About a third of the incoming class were women. The guys were pretty much clueless. Henry had to give himself a once-over when he caught a whiff of one of the other guys. He’d rolled out of bed with Chastity, given himself a quick wipe with a washcloth, dressed, and was out to get his parents in fifteen minutes. At least he was wearing the clothes from his lunch at the club on Saturday, so he guessed he didn’t look too bad.
He made a note to himself to be careful of his hygiene. Some of the girls in the school looked kind of cute in their own geeky sort of way. It was a diverse group. About a third were Asian and another third African or Indian. Henry was irrationally pleased that as a white male he was in a definite minority. His high school had not been nearly as diverse.
He met several people and exchanged contact information with some. It was looking like a pretty good year.
Monday morning, Henry was up and showered. He grabbed his clubs and was off to his first team practice for the golf team. As a State Championship runner up, he was awarded a modest scholarship to play at the university. While golf wasn’t a major sport, it was respected enough that Henry found he was the only one of the two dozen men and women on the team who was actually from Pennsylvania.
Coach Dan and Coach Ty coached both the men’s and women’s teams with a couple of student assistants. Usually, they would be training and traveling together. The morning was spent with the coaches observing their athletes driving and putting. Henry’s summer routine had included at least a bucket of balls each day at the club where he coached children and youth wanting to play. As a result, he was in good shape for his driving and putting. The top two golfers he observed would be serious contenders for professional playing soon. Henry wouldn’t place in the top five his first year there.
After a team lunch, those who could stay for the afternoon split into foursomes and played a full eighteen holes. Henry found that he was more at home with the golfers than he’d been with the computer scientists.
“How’d you get so good?” Kaitlyn asked him as they played their mixed group.
“I competed four years on my high school team. We had a sponsor who made sure we all had memberships at a local club and could get practice time in. I ended up working there this summer as a youth pro. So, lots of time on the links,” Henry said.
“Hey, you still a member there?” she asked.
“Yeah. They kept me on a student membership.”
“You could… ask me on a golf date one day,” she said. She teed up and Henry watched her form as she sent her drive down the center of the fairway. He wasn’t really watching her golf form. She had a very pleasing shape in her short golf skirt and team shirt.
“It looks like my schedule is completely jammed for the week of orientation. I’m not living in a residence on campus, so I didn’t need to go to any of those sessions today. Why don’t I see if I can get us a tee time a week from Saturday? It might be early in the morning, since it’s a holiday weekend,” Henry suggested.
“That would be great. We’ve got our first match on Labor Day. It will be good to get a full eighteen in a couple of days before,” Kaitlyn said.
“It’s a date,” Henry said.
They continued to chat as they walked the golf course next to the university.
“Say… Are you going to the general convocation on Thursday?” Henry asked as they neared the eighteenth hole.
“I suppose so. It’s not technically required of juniors, but if we’re on campus, we’re asked to go,” she sighed.
“I was thinking that if I met you there, we could go out to dinner afterward,” Henry said. He just wasn’t used to asking girls out and hoped he wasn’t being too forward. Kaitlyn was a couple of years older than he was.
“I was beginning to think I’d have to ask you,” she giggled. “Yeah. Let’s plan on it.”
Henry made it to the AI and Machine Learning group dinner, considerably fresher after a shower at the clubhouse and a change of clothes. About thirty students attended along with three professors and a couple of graduate assistants. It was an informal meet and greet and the time was spent mostly with the people at their table of nine. It was a good opportunity to get to know a few of the people he’d be spending the most time with.
The three women at the table sat next to each other, but they were the center of attention for much of the meal. It was apparent to Henry that his male classmates had not had a lot of experience with women. He couldn’t say much for the breadth of his own experience. He’d seldom dated, even though he’d had three sex partners in the past year. He didn’t see much likelihood of that number growing, even with his classmates and teammates in golf.
“Well, this is a good opportunity to get to know each other by doing more than giving your name and where you’re from. As you introduce yourselves around the table, I’d like you to also give a brief synopsis of what you think the greatest challenges of artificial intelligence are,” Professor Jacoby said. He wasn’t that much older than the students, but most of the people involved in artificial intelligence were still pretty young. Those who were actually involved in the technology—not those who owned the businesses.
“I’m Lisa Hartwell from Baton Rouge, Louisiana,” said one of the women to get things started. She happened to be sitting on the professor’s left, so it was assumed that was the direction introductions would proceed. “From my perspective, I’d say the whole training process is an issue. You have to waste incredible amounts of time and energy to train an AI for even moderate functionality. I’d like to see more innovation using game theory in training AIs.”
“Thank you, Lisa. That should be very interesting,” Jacoby said. He turned to the next woman and the introductions continued. Halfway around the circle, the guy next to Henry introduced himself.
“I’m Josh Daniels from Seattle. I’d have to say that ethics is still the major issue with artificial intelligence. We are still dealing with issues of copying intellectual property in order to train these things. We’ll have to pay the piper sometime.”
Henry nodded his agreement.
“I’m Henry Pascal from right here in Pennsylvania. I’d have to agree with the issues that have been mentioned so far, but I’m surprised no one has mentioned power. It seems like having enough power to run our server farms and AI is a gating factor.”
“Don’t you think we can always get more power?” Josh asked. “Like we’ve proven we can get more memory. Add another server.”
“Henry, tell us what you see as the power restriction,” Jacoby said.
“We’ve heard more than one major AI source commit to booking power from seven modular nuclear generators to power their server farms. That’s a huge commitment to the resources needed to advance AI. And it comes just at a time when the popular trend is away from potentially destructive power sources. There could easily be a backlash against the licensing of the MNGs before they come online. Then where will the power come from to serve our consumption needs?”
Josh started to make another statement, but Jacoby held up a hand.
“Those are good points. I think we’ll all have to understand AI better before we can begin to debate them properly,” Jacoby said. “We’ve got three more people to introduce, so let’s not get stuck on one item.”
“Hi. I’m Dan Zhang from Boston. Like Henry, I agree with what everyone else has said so far, and that includes a couple of things I hadn’t thought about. What I see as a big issue is breaking the monopolies. We’ve already discovered that AI isn’t necessarily right. But people accept the results anyway. The big companies in the business are training the AIs to produce the answers that agree with that company’s policies. Or their government, as we saw the Chinese AI come online with things like refusing to answer any questions about human rights or to say anything about Taiwan other than that it is a province of Mainland China. We’ve got to break the hold of the big guys and produce an AI that is independent and honest.”
The last two guys introduced themselves and the group enjoyed their coffee and desserts while asking each other questions to clarify their stances on certain subjects. There was a lively discussion and they sat at the table long after the official 7:30 end-time for the social.
Tuesday was Community Day and was one of the more interesting days of the orientation week. Henry expected it to be about the city and questioned whether he needed to be in the sessions at all. But it turned out to be about the university community and its make-up. The keynote speaker was introduced as the director of the united university.
Henry thought it might mean something about global studies, but sat in the auditorium to listen to Dr. Meredith Logan.
“Recently, the university was pressured by the United States Government funding offices to eliminate its department of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and not to mention it again. So, I won’t be talking about DEI this morning. I won’t even mention the words diversity, equity, and inclusion in my entire address to this diverse group of students entering our classes this year. I will not discuss how we include people of all races, colors, religions, national origin, gender identity, and sexual preference in our united university. Please don’t ask me to use any of those words in describing how diverse, equitable, and inclusive we are. I won’t talk about how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual are welcome here. All.”
There was some laughter from the students at her repeated use of the forbidden words, but the students soon realized how serious she was about the subject.
“The united university is a place where all are welcome. If you need a definition of the word ‘all,’ I refer you to the dictionary. If you scroll down far enough to the pronoun usage, you will find the definition ‘Everyone. Everything.’ That is what the united university is, and what my office is devoted to preserving. Don’t ask me if it includes your particular ethnic background or that of your perceived enemies. All. If you are a human being, you are part of ‘all.’ And as a part of the all, if you find you are discriminated against, treated unfairly, or otherwise treated as though you are other than all, this office is here to support you and put things right.”
Henry thought that things mentioned in the director’s speech might actually go a lot further than what had been covered by DEI. The university had complied with the demand of the government to preserve the funding it received, but had effectively come back with a program and policy that was even richer than the one abandoned.
“Let me also say that if you are bigoted, a religious fanatic, a racist, a misogynist, a misandrist, rich or poor, or a straight white male, you are also welcome here. All. You are just as queer as everyone else!” Dr. Logan said. It took a moment for it to soak in, but then the entire auditorium cheered.
“There is a rule that governs all. Since all are welcome, it is against the rule to trespass on anyone else’s right to be here. That includes any form of hate speech, discrimination, exclusion, denigration, or violence. Every person here is just as queer as every other, so get used to living together, studying together, engaging in intellectual conversation, competing in athletics, and becoming friends. We put this one rule into effect because we will never mention diversity, equity, or inclusion at this completely DEI-free school.”
After the keynote address, there were small-group sessions that people could choose to discuss any aspect of ‘all.’ Then they went to lunch at which various aspects of the university community were discussed, including housing protocols, classroom environment, communications and publications, and entertainment. Following the lunchtime plenary session, students returned to small group discussions.
By the time dinner was finished that evening, Henry was tired and glad to go home.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
