Chapter 10: Rebuild

I put my hands on the keys.

For a second, nothing came.

Five strangers watched my fingers, and my head was as blank as the screen.

Then I thought about the kitchen table.

Grandma holding up the pink bottle.

Does your computer know it's the pink one?

I started typing.

"First it has to find the label," I said. "Pill bottles are curved, so the words bend around the side."

"If you read them flat, the letters at the edges get squashed."

I wrote the part that found the edges of the label.

"So it asks for a short video instead of one photo. You turn the bottle while the phone watches."

"Then it stitches the frames into one flat strip."

I wrote that part.

The old woman in the scarf leaned in.

The young man in the suit started taking notes.

Nolan didn't move. He watched the screen with his arms folded.

It took me forty minutes to rebuild the core of it.

When I finished, my shirt was stuck to my back.

"Can I test it?"

Garner took a bottle of ibuprofen out of his cardigan pocket and slid it across the table.

"Be my guest."

I held it up to the laptop's camera and turned it slowly.

The program chewed for a few seconds.

Then a flat voice came out of the speakers.

"Ibuprofen. Two hundred milligrams. Take one tablet every four to six hours."

The old woman laughed and clapped once.

Garner smiled into his beard.

Nolan unfolded his arms.

"Cute," he said. "Now do it in a real kitchen."

He reached up and turned the desk lamp on the table so it shone straight down on the bottle.

A hard white glare bounced off the plastic, right across the label.

"Turn it again."

I turned it.

The program chewed.

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