Tomorrowland: Frank and Athena

Chapter 12 - The School Principal

It was in the morning about two weeks later that Athena heard the video phone announce that Frank was calling. She felt very pleased by this; it was several days since their last visit and she'd been considering calling him. Her mother was off at work.

She sat in front of the T-Net terminal and activated the call. "Hello, Frank."

"Hi," Frank said, a bit shyly.

Athena picked up immediately that Frank's mood seemed unusual, though she had no knowledge of anything that might be bothering him.

"Is anything wrong?" Athena asked.

Frank looked startled. "What? No!" he said quickly, but then sighed. "Well, maybe a little. It's hard to hide anything from you," he grinned.

Athena smiled, happy to see that it didn't seem overly serious. "What's up?"

"Well, it's just that today is August 21st. Which is my birthday. I turned 12 today," he said casually, though Athena surmised he was likely feeling lonely because of this.

"Happy birthday, Frank!" Athena said, giving him a warm smile. "If you wish, I could come over and we could do something together in honor of your birthday. I'm free now."

Frank looked very happy at this. "I was hoping you'd say that," he said. "See you soon."

Athena said her goodbyes and signed off. She was about to put on her shoes and leave, but then memories of birthdays came to her. Caroline always made her a small cake on her birthday (though Athena didn't actually consume any, so her mother ate it all) so perhaps it would please Frank if she did that for him as well. She was familiar with baking methods and it wouldn't take her long. She sent Frank a mail message on the T-Net terminal, telling him she would be delayed about a half-hour.

She knew that cakes came in different flavors, but didn't know Frank's preference, so decided to just go with her mother's favorite, chocolate. It took her about 33 seconds to get out supplies and mix the batter, which she did by hand since she could do it faster than her mother's mixing machine (in fact, her mother often had her do mixing jobs rather than the mixing machine).

While waiting for the oven to warm up (which required an annoying amount of time by Athena's standards), she mixed up some frosting of two colors. Unfortunately, this only required another 12 seconds, so she was forced to wait impatiently, watching the oven come up to temperature. She considered possible ways to generate heat to warm it faster, including tapping into her own power reserves, but ultimately decided to be patient. Five minutes later, it was (at last) heated to the proper temperature, which she understood was actually faster than standard Earth ovens. She felt gratitude toward some Tomorrowland oven engineer.

The baking time was 22 minutes for the small-sized cake, which regrettably couldn't be shortened in any reasonable way, according to her mother. She made use of the time by studying an upcoming recruiting trip to some college towns in the New Jersey, USA vicinity until finally her internal clock told her it was complete.

She tested the cake using a toothpick, the method her mother used. It was sufficiently baked so she removed it from the oven and plopped it onto a cooling rack. Normally Caroline would wait at this time, but Athena figured this was a place she could speed things up. She used a large spatula as a fan and moved her hand quickly to increase the airflow. She measured the temperature with her infrared vision and 28 seconds later deemed it cool enough to apply frosting. It took her another 19 seconds to apply a base of frosting (she considered doing it faster, but feared frosting flinging from her knife across the kitchen, creating a mess and slowing her down further) and another four seconds to add "Happy 12th Birthday Frank" to it in the other frosting color, which she did in a cursive font style. She knew cakes often had frosting applied with a haphazard texture, so she didn't bother making the frosting surface perfectly smooth, which would have required her to slow down even further and spend several more minutes.