invisiblecompany

Wednesday

You're my person blanky.

"Let me be the distraction,
Let me be the dream."

Such presence for someone her age.

I'm wearing my Big Change T-shirt. Giles is here. George is a great musician. She's ... I don't know why I'm like this. "Huh."

Okay. I swear I had 11 ducks yesterday so how come I only have 9 today. They have duck thieves here? *sigh* Americans.

*****

Thursday

Willow Rosenberg was in a very bad mood.

"So I'm incompetent in musicianese, no need to be so condescending," she complained to herself once she got back to her room after the intense and highly uncomfortable encounter in the café.

Although Oz was his usual gentlemanly self in explaining the difference between amps and Elvis songs, Willow could not help being hurt by his remarks. She had been around the Dingoes long enough, she should have picked up more of the jargon, it's not like she was lacking in the photographic memory department.

She was never that interested in the music talk, she was always just Oz's brainy girlfriend. Try as she might, she could not relate to the other girlfriends and boyfriends, the ones that Devon or one of the other guys brought to rehearsals or shows were, well, more interested in ogling and drooling.

It was not like Willow could talk to any of them about her own interests like school, computers, witchcraft or the vampiry demony stuff anyway. So she settled on being happy at the fact that she was dating a musician, someone her mother would label a rebel, it gave nerdy Wills street cred.

Oz understood that. He was Oz afterall. He understood everything and with just one word he was able to convey everything he wanted to say and everything was cool. He always gave her space. He always understood.

Of course, the real source of her anger was that short, pasty, Faith-like skank called Veruca, who had breezed onto campus and was making Oz act weird. There was nothing Shy about her. Willow knew something had passed between Oz and Veruca, she was a science nerd and not very experienced on the relationship front, but she had womanly hormones afterall and those hormones were telling her that Veruca was bad news.

"What's wrong with my shirt anyway?"

She decided to punish Oz by not thinking about him or if he were to call, she would not answer him. That should make him see the error of his ways.

Besides, she was looking forward to Wicca group orientation that evening. It would be great to learn from and with the other practitioners. To advance her witchy knowledge. Willow was big on the knowledge advancement.

But before Wicca group she had a whole afternoon of another of her favorite activities, computer lab. She quickly gathered her books and her laptop, her tiff with Oz momentarily forgotten.

Her mood improved considerably when she reached the computer lab. Here was a place where she felt completely at home, where her thoughts and ideas were carried out to her exact instructions, where her mastery in building and breaking were never ridiculed. She would never mistake PERL for a pretty necklace or W3C for a tax document. There in the realms of parsers and bits and markup languages she wielded power beyond the dreams of a lesser person. And she liked it.

She settled down at her usual workstation and got to work. At the other side of the lab the robotics group were having a meeting which steadily grew in size and noise. She felt her annoyance increasing at the distraction, between her current bad mood and the racket coming from the others she was not getting anything done. She flicked a glance at the group, their attention seemed to be centered on someone hidden from view who was conducting the meeting. Willow wished the professor would just control the crowd better.

"Yo! Willow! You gotta come and see this, it's the greatest," one of the guys shouted over at her.

"What's going on, Carl?" she asked, with a mixture of curiosity and impatience.

"C'mon, just come and see," came the reply.

Deciding she was not going to get any work done she decided to pack it in. 'If you can't beat 'em, join 'em,' she thought as she ambled over to see what the fuss was about.

The center of attention turned out to be a shoebox on wheels with a video camera protruding from the top. It was nothing special to look at but Willow was enough of a scientist to understand that prototypes of potentially ground-breaking machines or concepts were generally crude home-made devices. It was what they could do that was important.

The box was inching forward in an enclosed area that also held ... a dozen chicks. Fluffy, yellow mini-chickens huddled together along one of the makeshift walls.

"Isn't it cool?" Carl enthused.

"Let me guess, surrogate mother hen? Chick fighting shoebox?" Willow smirked.

"No. Robot Sheepdog Project. The one run by that professor at Oxford that was all over the wire," Carl explained. "One of his students is right here as an exchange student. That's her over there with the controls."

Willow was familiar with the famous Robot Sheepdog Project, any self-respecting computer scientist would have read about the prestigious research project spearheaded by one of the bright young professors at Oxford. In any case, after the business with Ted, she had tried to keep up-to-date on developments in that area. Of course when she applied for colleges she'd read up on the type of research undertaken by target academic institutions like Oxford.

By now the demonstration was finishing, as the robot "dog" had successfully herded the group of chicks to one corner of the enclosure, to much applause. The onlookers began to drift away, until only Willow and a handful of others remained.

"You know, eventually the chicks might run away to that corner anyway just to get away from so many people," someone remarked.

"That's the repulsion part of the model, the other part is of course attraction," the exchange student at the helm of the controls responded while she cleared up the demonstration apparatus. "I can show you it also works under different environments, statistically it's sounder than just fear."

"How exactly does it work?" Carl piped up.

"It's called potential field theory, it balances a particle's attraction against its repulsion towards both other particles and its environment. These so-called flock control algorithms can be programmed into the robot and enables it to move the flock," she explained.

"So the robot does one calculation of how the chicks are attracted to each other, one of how they want to stay away from each other and another one of how they want to stay away from the robot. It does this continuously to get the highest figure for the first result. How does it know where to take the flock?" Willow mused.

The girl smiled at Willow, pleased that someone got the idea so quickly. "Attraction to the goal is one of the parameters, as is repulsion to the walls," she replied.

"Aha. But how does the robot know when to stop?" Willow continued.

"Hey Will, give the girl a break, stop with the third degree already," one of the guys teased.

"No, that's ok. I'm actually glad of the interest. In Oxford we get ribbed a lot, cos we're the loons who play with chicks and ducks, and of course we're the butt of all chicken-crossing-the-road jokes," the girl said. "Anyway if you want I can continue while I take the chicks back to the animal enclosure."

The other students had dispersed by then, and Willow found herself the only one left.

"Heh, the interest seems to have disappeared," the girl laughed good naturedly at the departures.

"Well, the animal enclosure is a bit outta the way, and most people tend to stick to the main campus areas cos dangerous stuff goes on," less risk of running into stray vampires, thought Willow.

"Yeah, I heard about the PCP gangs and sudden gas leaks and escaped animals, we only get normal criminals in Oxford," the girl chuckled as she rounded up the chicks. "What other funny stuff goes on around here?"

How about we live on a hellmouth and vampires are real and my best friend's the slayer and I've been through like 5 apocalypses so far.

"Lots. If you're interested there's plenty of newspaper articles I can show you. Just gotta be careful and not go to some parts of town, stay indoors at night and try not to go out on your own at night," Willow sidetracked, how could she tell the new arrival about all that she knew about her home town?

"You make Sunnydale sound like a inner city slum. Can't be that bad," the girl said.

"It's got hidden talents. I'm sorry if I sound like a nag, cos you don't know me from Adam, an-an-and we haven't even been introduced properly, but you gotta believe me, it can get dangerous, more dangerous than you think or will ever experience. Not that anyone wants you to experience the badness out there, but well, what I'm trying to say is, there's some really dangerous stuff going on, especially at night, and I highly recommend that you read the info pack that all students get given very carefully," Willow stopped talking abruptly on seeing the shocked and frightened expression on the girl's face.

"I didn't know. I mean, there's such a nice small town feel, I didn't realize —" the other girl started.

"No no, I'm sorry, I've scared you. Look, just make sure you're on the alert at all times and be as careful as you'd be at home and it'll be fine," Willow reassured her. "I'll walk you to the enclosure and I'll answer your questions about Sunnydale if you'll answer mine on the robot sheepdog, deal?"

They packed up the robot dog and the girl shoo'ed the chicks into a cage. Willow helped carry some of the boxes and they set out for the zoo, as the animal enclosure was known.

For a while they walked in silence, enjoying the afternoon sun. Willow took the opportunity to observe the other girl. Short black hair framed an oval face, dark brown eyes and glasses that had slid part way down her nose. Like Willow, she was not very tall and small boned, though she appeared quite fit. Loose white shirt with sleeves rolled up, jeans and sneakers, a typical student look. Definitely Asian in appearance but paler than the other Asians that Willow had met, perhaps what Giles had said about there not being enough sun in England was true afterall.

"Joey," the girl said, out of the blue.

"Sorry?" Willow quickly snapped out of her reverie.

"In the middle of you nagging me to be careful around campus you mentioned we haven't been introduced. I'm Joey.'

"Oh. Willow, Willow Rosenberg."

"Nice to meet you, Willow. You have a pretty name."

Willow actually blushed, compliments on her name, or anything else apart from excellent grades, were not something she was familiar with. To counter the on set of awkwardness, she changed the topic to something more neutral.

"Thanks. Anyway, you were explaining about how the robot would know when to stop?"

*****

She was in a much better mood when she turned up for the Wicca group orientation.

It was not a large group, a dozen or so. She was a little disappointed that even the most experienced in the group were nothing more than textbook Wiccans who seemed to have gotten their knowledge through downloading some pages off the internet or borrowing Wicca for Dummies from the library and reading the first few chapters.

A humorless brunette calling herself Cheryl introduced herself as the leader, reminded everyone of the Esbat and led them all on a short chanting session that was supposed to summon positive elemental energies.

They discussed pooling resources like herbs and crystals and setting up a prayer altar. But mostly it was talk about horoscopes, which candle scent was the best and what social events they should organize. All in all, a bunch of wanna blessed-be's.

Willow was distracted. With her unease over Oz's weird demeanor combined with excitement over meeting a new science friend, she did not pay much attention at the orientation.

Ah well. She would try to participate more in tomorrow's meeting.