Charity Sunday: For Girls (and Women) Who Code – #BlackHistoryMonth #InternationalWomensDay #CharitySunday

 

Welcome to the February Charity Sunday blog hop! As usual, I am featuring a worthy cause, giving you an excerpt to thank you for visiting, and asking for your comments. For each comment you leave, I will make a donation to my chosen charity.

This month I am once again supporting Girls Who Code, an organization that works to increase female participation in STEM, especially in computer technology and with a special focus on underrepresented groups and people of color. I strongly believe in their core principles: bravery, sisterhood and activism. 

 

I’m a woman engineer myself. My path was easier than that of many young women; I came from a white, middle-class family with a strong commitment to education as well as a belief in female equality. I also had bold and creative female role models (though none of them was in tech). How much harder would it have been for me if I’d been born in a Black ghetto, or to a Syrian refugee family, or to a conservative, rural family struggling to survive through farming?

You can read more about Girls Who Code and their various activities on their website. (And I hope you will...) Meanwhile, I will donate two dollars to their work for every comment I receive on this post.

Last year I finished the third book in my trilogy featuring a female engineer, Gillian Smith, who joins a secret society involved in designing and building cutting edge erotic artifacts. So I have lots of excerpts showing smart women solving engineering problems! Here’s one from Book 2 of the series, The Journeyman’s Trial. Gillian and her lover Rafe have both been expelled from The Toymakers Guild, as punishment for a rash act that endangered the organization. Gillian has taken refuge in a cottage on the Cornish coast, where she tries to come to terms with her banishment.

Enjoy! And don’t forget to leave me a comment!

Excerpt (PG)

A sudden revelation stunned her. If Rafe did reject the Guild, then he was not, after all, the soul mate he had seemed.

As fellow journeymen, their paths aligned. They shared a common set of goals and values, dedicating both their erotic creativity and their technical abilities to the Guild’s mission. Members of Randerley’s wanton and uninhibited community, they belonged to an elite group of natural libertines, a handful of brave souls committed to answering the call of desire.

An outsider would never understand the bonds that linked the Guild members to one another. And despite several years of experience at Randerley, if Rafe were to turn his back on the Master and his perverse flock, he would become an outsider.

Intense grief swept through her, as though she’d already lost him. At the same time, she felt a new clarity and strength of purpose. She knew her own mind and heart and had made her own choice. Over Rafe’s decisions, she had no power. Only when she’d completed her banishment would she know the outcome.

Meanwhile, she could make herself useful. In response to Amelia’s suggestion, Gillian had brought her experimental Analytical Engine with her to Cornwall. This interlude of isolation was an ideal opportunity for her to address the difficulties that had previously frustrated her, with no competing tasks and no sensual distractions.

Exhausted by emotion and her hours of walking, she fell asleep by the fire. The next morning, however, crisp sunlight woke her. After dressing and stirring the embers on the hearth into a blaze, she breakfasted on hot tea, brown bread and curd. Then she pulled the complex mechanism from her luggage and set it on the table near the hourglass.

She worked until well past noon, refreshing her memory regarding the modes of failure she’d observed during her last efforts with the device. When the usual boy from the village arrived to deliver provisions, she realised she was ravenous, but she didn’t want to take the time to cook lunch. She grabbed an apple, a hunk of cheese and more bread, and returned to her contemplation of the recalcitrant machine.

It appeared to be consuming the instructions encoded on the perforated paper strip. The problem seemed to lie in translating them into actions. She’d built a small, highly simplified model of the punishment rack to use for testing, really just a set of levers and gears intended to represent one percussive instrument like a paddle and one reciprocating item like a dildo. These components did in fact move in response to her programme, but in an uncoordinated, erratic manner.

Had she made mistakes in implementing the engine? She’d followed Lady Lovelace’s notes faithfully, with the exception of one or two improvements that had seemed obvious. Could her minor enhancements be responsible for the poor performance? Anything was possible. Indeed, Lady Ada’s design might contain flaws; Ada Lovelace had never actually built an instance of her celebrated engine, having been more interested in the theory and its mathematical underpinnings. Going back to the notes, Gillian reviewed them step by step, searching for any omissions or for ambiguities she might have misinterpreted.

Around two, Gillian put the work aside and went out walking. The skies had cleared since the previous day and the views from the headlands were glorious. Despite her frustration with her development efforts, she found her spirits rising. She still had more than two weeks. She’d solve the puzzle eventually and return to Randerley triumphant, with the solution in hand.

Stopping to catch her breath, she gazed out at the sea. It was unusually calm. Overhead, the lowering sun painted the streaked clouds in shades of pink and orange. She’d walked all the way to Porthcumo, almost five miles. To the south, she could just make out the rhythmic pulsing of Wolf Rock Lighthouse. The open vista and the distant horizon were a marked contrast to the rolling country around Randerley.

Gratitude swelled in her chest. Amelia had been generous in offering this simple, peaceful haven. Mrs. Featherstone, at least, seemed to want her to come back. Gillian was determined to earn her redemption in the Governing Director’s eyes.

By the time she’d returned to the cottage, it was pitch dark. Gillian made herself a simple supper, read for a while by the light of a candle, then lay down on the narrow iron-framed bed. All the doubts churning in her mind had subsided: her shame and regret at having endangered the Guild; her fear that they wouldn’t accept her back; the wistful longing for Rafe’s presence and the craving for his touch. She drifted into sleep, relaxed and at peace, and woke alert and energised. Today, perhaps, she’d unravel the riddle.

She did not in fact get the engine to function correctly that day, or the next. However, she forced herself to remain calm and focused. Persistence and discipline were the key to progress. She disassembled the engine, examined each of its many parts for imperfections, then put it back together, step by step. Each time she integrated a new component, she tested its function using sets of minimal instructions.

Her efforts did not lead to success, but they built her confidence in the physical construction of the engine. As far as she could tell, it had been implemented correctly. The crux of the issue must lie elsewhere.

As the days ticked by, she worked and waited for the moment when she could rejoin the fellowship of the Guild. The answer came to her on January 31^st, which happened to be her twentieth birthday.

She’d expected to celebrate this milestone in the company of her fellow engineers at Randerley. Indeed, she’d imagined the Master might organize another erotically-charged gathering, sharing more of his magical winter wine. Still, she didn’t waste mental energy on what might have been.

She did allow herself a glass of Burgundy with her birthday supper of cold chicken and boiled potatoes. The single room where she’d spent nearly a month felt warm and cosy, lit by a merry fire and a pair of oil lanterns. She raised her glass – a simple tumbler, not a wine goblet – and smiled. Her voice was loud in her ears. “Happy Birthday, Gillian Smith! Here’s to another year of new adventures and new insights.”

Given her abstinence over the past weeks, the wine went straight to her head. Giggling, she refilled her tumbler. The Analytical Engine caught her eye, carefully put aside on the far corner of the table along with her tools and her notebook. “And here’s to you, you bloody stubborn machine,” she continued. “Sooner or later I’ll figure out how to make you obey me!”

Something shifted at the back of her mind, loosened perhaps by the alcohol. Maybe what she needed was commands. Her symbolic language for controlling the engine had specific representations for each possible instrument and each individual movement. Perhaps that was the wrong level of abstraction. If she could generalise the actions, that might permit smoother reactions...

She wasn’t about to try out her theory while she was tipsy. The next day, though, she began to sketch out a new grammar for her programmes. It took her until the third of February to create a paper-based sequence of instructions using her revised approach. Holding her breath, she watched the paper slide between the rollers that fed it to the engine. For a moment nothing happened. Then the miniature paddle began to swing, at a slow, even tempo, just as she’d intended.

“By Boole and Babbage! That’s it!” Jumping to her feet, she danced a little jig around the table. “I’ve done it! The Master will be so pleased!”

Don’t forget to leave a comment! Every one helps make the dreams and ambitious of smart young women become reality.

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