"I'm going to call them now," Angelina said, and called out the number to our telephone.

"I am connecting you now," the phone said. It was as good as its word and a moment later I could hear the phone ringing at the other end.

"Nanotechtrics, how may I help you? " the computer generated smarmy voice said.

"I want to talk to the boss," I called out.

"Whom shall I tell her is calling?"

"Good girl," Angelina said, always an enthusiast for female equality.

"Not her, him, James, his father…"

"Grrrk, " the computer said as it was interrupted. "Good to hear from you, Dad. Long time no talk. "

"Too long. All work and no play. But work first. I need a supercomputer for some research we are undertaking, one that's not as big as a house and needs an electric cable as thick as your arm to supply the juice."

"You have just described our Nanotechtric-68X. I'll get one to you at once."

"Everlasting thanks," I said and disconnected. The doorannunciator bleeped.

"I'll get it," Angelina said, then-"James, what a pleasant surprise, come in."

When my son says at once he really means it. "When you phoned I was in my chopper-and I had a 68X with me. I was just a hop away."

He brought in a battered leather suitcase, set it down and then it was kisses and handshakes all around. I eyed the suitcase suspiciously.

"Planning a trip?" I asked.

"Our latest model, the 68X." He swung it up onto the table and pressed the latch. A screen flipped up and the keyboard popped out. I looked at it dubiously and he laughed. "This is just about our first working model. We breadboarded it to fit into this old suitcase. Streamlining and whizbang decor will all come later. For field testing this can't be beat." He patted it affectionately. "It works in a massively parallel mode. It uses distributive resources that reach out to memory spread across high-speed networks, which makes its speed not only unmeasurable-but even hard to just estimate. Its high-end massively parallel systems are really in the several teraflop range."