An Excellent Thesis Topic
- Instead of hanging out with mean old Robert, Miri snoops on him from afar.
- She also hangs out with her internet friends. She tells them about Robert's issues and they discuss possible solutions. Including illegal solutions like JITT—"just-in-time training," which we think sounds like this.
- (They also discuss YGBM technology, which hasn't worked in the real world.)
- A little girl there gives Miri some advice: give Robert some stimulation by hooking him up with a graduate student. That way, Robert can discuss his poetry of the past and feel good about it.
- Miri does a search later and finds a good match—a graduate student in Oregon named Sharif. (Hmmm, where did we hear that name before?)
- Miri suspects the little girl who gave this advice might be trying to arrange something, but it still looks good.
- We see the next scene from Zulfikar Sharif's POV. Sharif is a grad student looking for a thesis topic and now a strange virtual woman comes to him to tell him about this great opportunity.
- Yeah, it sounds like one of those scam emails from Nigeria, but it's only a little bit of a scam. The woman will give Sharif a private address to contact Robert Gu, but she wants to tag along and occasionally make suggestions to Sharif about what to say. Nothing weird about that, right?
- In fact, this mystery woman asks for full access to Sharif's system, which is a bit like giving out all of your private info at once. But Sharif is so desperate that he does it.
- The mysterious woman points out that Robert (a) is a jerk and (b) misses old stuff, like books. So if Sharif wants to get on his good side, he might have to remind Robert of the good old days.