Meeting of the Minds [Archibald and Genesis]

Distractions.

The bane of human existence.

Life’s way of throwing obstacles at those determined to succeed.

The mentally weak were easily distracted. They were no better than a courtyard dog, barking and lunging at the every passing squirrel.

The strong knew how to brave the endless chances to lose focus. They were the ones who brushed aside all that didn’t matter, focusing on their work until it was complete and they chose to put an end it, not until some irrelevant unrelated detail decided to capture their attentions. Archibald’s parents were strong. That’s how they’d gotten to be so prominent in their fields. Archibald yearned to be like them.

The words in front of Archibald filled his mind as he focused on absorbing as much of them as he could. Capacitance sensors use principles associated with capacitance in order to form fingerprint images. This was the type of information he could use to develop fingerprint-based weapons. That way, even if a peacekeeper was miraculously overpowered, nobody could use his weapons against him. Perhaps he would one day implement a self-defense system that shocked anyone else who touched an official weapon.

In this method of imaging, the sensor array pixels each act as one plate of a parallel-plate capacitor, the electrically conductive dermal layer acts as –
“"- I sit here, right? I'm running thirty-two minutes behind schedule."

Distraction!

Archibald became suddenly aware that someone had asked him a question, and by reflex, his brain stopped focusing on the task at hand as his ears tuned into the words being spoken and his eyes shifted from the screen to a girl’s face.

There’s no time to waste on distractions. That’s 5, 10, 20 seconds wasted.

He would have to restart from the top to ensure that his brain logged the information. He would have to brush the girl off as soon as possible.

With a dismissive wave of a hand, the one clutching the last bit of his lunch, Archibald replied, “Do what you want. Just don’t get in the way of my work. You’ve already wasted thirty-two seconds of my time.”

Without further ado, he stuffed the last of his lunch into his mouth and regained his focus on the screen in front of him.

Capacitance sensors use principles associated with capacitance in order to form fingerprint images. In this method of imaging, the sensor array pixels each act as one plate of a parallel-plate capacitor, the electrically conductive dermal acts as the other plate, and the non-conductive epidermal layer acts as a dielectric.
Hopefully the girl wouldn’t give Archibald any more trouble. She had already proven herself enough of a distraction.