Read A Silly Millimeter for Free Online

A Silly Millimeter
Steve Bellinger
    Hank was livid. “A thousand dollars? A thousand goddamned dollars?”
    “Hank, please don’t swear in front of the computer—you know how it likes to mimic you,” Mindy cried as she tried to calm her husband. “Besides, he did say that we wouldn’t have to pay the fine if we made corrections within the next ten days.”
    “But, Mindy, a thousand dollars! It takes me a whole day and a half to make that kind of money! And who knows what it’s going to cost to fix it!” Hank growled as he ripped the violation notice to shreds.
    “No, Hank! Don’t destroy the notice! It’s recyclable! That’s a five hundred dollar fine!”
    Hank sighed and dropped the pieces on the kitchen table. He pressed the “outside” key on a nearby config control and a window appeared on the wall. He looked out at all the rectangular homes on the street, all featureless and virtually identical. Some were white, others pastel pink, blue or gray. All identical in design and identical in size to a very small tolerance. Which is why his home had been cited.
    “Who did the measurements?” Hank turned to his wife who squinted as she tried to reassemble the notice and read the fine print.
    “Uh—Bemis.”
    “Asshole,” Hank murmured. Bemis was Chief Inspector. No chance that any of his measuring equipment would have been malfunctioning. Even if it was, Bemis carried so much clout that there was no way to fight him and win. “Where’s my laser rule?”
    “In the garage.”
    Hank closed the window, which vanished completely, and ordered up a door. A thin, vertical, luminescent line grew outward from the center of the wall and expanded to a rectangle. Within the rectangle, the wall shimmered and became an opening to the outside. He stepped into the hot December sun and walked around to the back of the house. It was an uninteresting block, just like all the others, except for the color. As he approached the rear of the house, another doorway appeared and he entered the garage.
    The manual had said that the hand-held laser rule was guaranteed to be accurate to plus or minus 350 angstroms. He carefully measured all the outer walls, width and height, as he bounced the invisible laser beam off the corners. He keyed in the standard homeowners’ parameters and had the unit compute a comparison.
    “Damn!” he said as he looked at the results. He stomped back into the house, nearly bumping into the wall that almost did not become a door quickly enough.
    “The son-of-a-bitch is right, Mindy!”
    “If he’s right then he’s not a son-of-a-bitch,” Mindy said calmly.
    “Mindy!” Hank glared at her, “Not in front of the computer, dammit!”
    *
    Hank dialed the Dwellformers on the vidphone. The house was barely five years old. Perhaps the problem was still covered under the warranty. A cute young lady appeared on the screen. She seemed to be doing something with her fingernails.
    “Dwellformers,” she said without looking up.
    Hank tried to be polite, “Customer service, please.”
    She lifted her head and glared blankly into the screen, “Customer service? Oh, you mean complaints! Just a moment, sir.”
    The screen went blank, and after a few seconds, a man in a white jumpsuit appeared. “This is Bell of customer service, how may I help you?”
    “My name is Henry 07 Banks. I own unit 445TR6. I think I have a problem.”
    “Just a moment,” Bell looked away as he pecked some keys on a computer console. “That home is just over 5 years old. There can’t possibly be a problem.”
    “Well, there is, dammit!”
    “What’s wrong?”
    Hank drew in a deep breath. “My house is a millimeter too big. The city is going to fine me a thousand dollars a day until it’s fixed!”
    Bell looked down at the console. “No, we measured that structure after we formed it. It was well within specs. In fact, it was a couple of micrometers less than ideal—but, like I said, well within specs.”
    “I don’t give