AN: A nice, long chapter to end the weekend with! I've used a little poetic licence with this chapter, keeping Penny and Leonard a couple and deciding that Sheldon's Chancellor Award was one of many given out that evening. I have absolutely no idea whether anything to do with the computer searches referenced in this chapter is even remotely accurate...so feel free to ignore the glaring errors and enjoy it for the entertainment value only...
"This is impossible!" Leonard threw up his hands in disgust as the computer programme that Howard's friend had provided, spewed out yet another stream of complete gibberish. "It's completely useless and we'd have been better off sticking with Google."
"What's it saying now?" Sheldon looked up from where he was still trawling through the five thousand odd individual recipients from the Chancellor's Awards, cross referencing them against his colour coded database.
"No match found." Leonard jabbed a finger on the return key impatiently and cursed under his breath. "I know that there should be at least six thousand names coming up because I entered a fairly loose parameter…the 2010 Chancellor's Award recipients."
"Hmm…very strange, you'd have thought that you'd have got the same answers as we got from the official website." Sheldon left his papers strewn over the floor and leant over Leonard's shoulder to study the lines of code that had been written for the programme. "No, sorry…can't make head nor tail of it; it looks partly like a Python code but there's something mixed in there that I just can't recognise."
"Do you think we should ask Howard to lend a hand? I mean, he writes code every day for his robots; maybe he can see something that we just can't." Leonard looked over at his roommate, who was growing more and more frustrated as the weeks went on. "Sheldon, we've been spending every minute of our free time on this for the last six weeks! I haven't had a date night with Penny in so long that I'm not even sure that we're still dating! I'm running out of excuses to give her and the guys know something's going on…we haven't been to paintball since the end of March."
"Has it been that long?" Sheldon asked in amazement and then sighed as he looked down at the mess on the living room floor. "I guess it couldn't hurt to ask Howard to cast his eye over the code that you've already written…we could tell him that we're using it as a practise run for when we write our own code. No details though, I don't want to have to face his smug expression or listen to any sarcastic comments he makes…I can just hear him now; 'Ooh Sheldon, Pinocchio's finally turned into a real boy.'" Sheldon mimicked Howard's tone so accurately that Leonard could almost believe that the diminutive engineer was actually in the room with them.
"No details, I promise. Let me give him a call and see whether he's free tonight." Leonard pulled out his cell and scrolled through his contact list until he found Howard's number. "I take it you haven't heard from Amy since the banquet?" He asked as he waited for Howard to pick up and Sheldon shook his head before turning away to pick up the scattered papers.
Sheldon hadn't dreamt of Amy at all since that night, in fact he hadn't dreamt at all or if he had he wasn't remembering them. He had spent many a night trying to meditate into a relaxed state so that she would appear, but nothing seemed to work. He had even contemplated consuming copious amounts of alcohol in an attempt to relieve the night of the banquet but stopped himself from stooping to that level.
"Sheldon?" Leonard's patient tone had Sheldon looking over his shoulder at his roommate and from the look on Leonard's face it wasn't the first time he had called his name. "Howard's gonna drop his Mom off at home after her water aerobics class and then head over; he should be here by eight thirty."
"Okay." Sheldon replied quietly and concentrated on stacking each individual piece of paper neatly on top of the first, tamping the edges so that everything lined up correctly. Leonard watched his friend's almost robotic movements and hoped that this whole mess would be sorted out quickly. He'd heard Sheldon walking around the apartment in the early hours of the morning when he couldn't sleep and he wouldn't be a bit surprised if Gablehauser called his roommate into a meeting one day soon to discuss Sheldon's complete lack of focus at work.
"How about we watch a little TV until Howard gets here?" Leonard suggested as soon as Sheldon had finished picking up the print outs and set them neatly on his desk. "Oh look your favourite DS9 episode is about to start! You love the one with the Tribbles."
"You can watch it if you like, I'm not really in the mood." Sheldon sat down in his spot and lowered his gaze to his hands, fingers twisting nervously in his lap as he checked the time on his wristwatch. When Leonard caught him checking the time again after just a few seconds, he aimed the remote at the TV and muted the sound.
"Why don't you tell me a little more about Amy while we wait for Howard?"
"I don't really have anything else to add apart from the facts that I've already given you; she's a graduate of Harvard, working as a neurobiologist somewhere in California and her name is Amy." Sheldon ticked the details off his fingers one by one and Leonard leant forward in the armchair.
"Yeah, I got all of that…but why don't you tell me a little bit more about her? What's her favourite colour, what kind of laugh does she have? What's her likes and dislikes?"
"Oh. You mean the touchy feely stuff?" Sheldon pursed his lips as he thought about Leonard's questions, leaning back against the rear cushions and sliding down a little in his seat. He smiled faintly as he hugged a cushion to his chest. "Her favourite colour is pink; not the vivid pink that Penny favours but the softer hue like the inside of a seashell. She doesn't wear it very often as she prefers to wear more striking colours as part of her work wardrobe, she keeps the pastels for when she's at home." Leonard smiled at Sheldon's poetic turn of phrase and propped his arm on the side of the chair as he waited for Sheldon to continue.
"She's fond of music; she has a full sized Harp at home and likes the soft, sappy music that you hear in those movies that Raj likes to watch when he thinks no one cares about him. Amy has two laughs; a polite chuckle for when she doesn't think something is particularly funny but laughs because everyone else is…and the other is quiet and husky, as it makes her eyes glow like sparkling jewels; that's the laugh you want to hear because that's when she really comes alive." Sheldon found himself smiling as he thought about what Amy looked like when she really smiled; her skin would glow as if it were coated in fairy dust and she never looked more beautiful. "She prefers to watch romantic period drama's over crime or thrillers and positively refuses to watch horror movies in case it sets off her night terrors. She loves watching monkeys at the zoo, and it's often difficult to persuade her to move onto another exhibit if they are being particularly playful. Um…she's an only child to a single mother; her father having passed away when she was very young, Amy has very little memory of him being around as he was a surgeon in the Army and was killed in action. Her mother doesn't like to speak about him so Amy has had to rely on anecdotes passed on from her mother's aunt Flora and they are sketchy at best as they moved around a lot when she was growing up."
"Sounds like you know a lot more about her than you first thought." Leonard said quietly and Sheldon nodded briefly.
"None of which is going to be at all useful at narrowing down our search."
"I don't know…she might have something in her work bio about having a father in the Army. We'll see what Howard comes up with and maybe we can add that as a secondary parameter once we've narrowed the field a little." They both looked up as there was a brief tap on the door before Howard opened it up and entered the living room.
"So, what sort of problem are you having with the programme?"
"It's not returning any usable data at all…that's the problem." Leonard pulled up the results from his most recent search and tapped on the blank area of the screen. "We know that we should be seeing a whole list of names in that field, but it's completely empty and we can't figure out why."
"How do you know there should be any results displayed?" Howard nudged Leonard out of the way and opened up the background coding, scanning over the code looking for errors.
"Because we asked it to look for something we already had the answer to, kind of like a test to see if it really worked. There should have been a couple of thousand names on that list and there's not a single one returned."
"Hmm…I can't see anything obvious, let me give my friend a call and see if he knows what the problem might be." Howard pulled his phone out and dialled up his friend in the State Department. "Timmy? It's Howard…yeah, that's what I'm calling about. It doesn't appear to be working…Uh-huh, at all." Howard propped his phone between his shoulder and his ear so that he had both hands free to use the keyboard. "Yeah, I'm in the coding now…Uh-huh…oh really? Yeah, that's kinda interesting…yup, making the change now." Howard glanced over when Leonard thrust a piece of paper under his nose, and tapped the message scrawled on the pad. "One last question, how do I add secondary parameters once the initial search has completed?" Howard gestured for the pen and Leonard passed it over, the engineer scrawling data on the sheet and nodding as he listened to his friend's instructions. "Okay, got it…Thanks, Timmy." Howard set the phone carefully on the desk and swivelled in his chair as he folded his arm across his chest. "Someone care to fill me in on why the State Department's computers are churning out lists of individuals that received a Chancellor's Award this year? Yeah, that's right…you forgot the one thing I told you to do! Change the first frigging line of code to your own IP address!" Howard yelled as he waved his arm in the air. "Tim's had to hack into his own system to erase all of the searches the two of you have run over the last five weeks…" Howard looked down at the notes he had scribbled on the notepad. "Chancellor's Award, Neurobiologists working in California, Graduates from Harvard Medical from 1990 through to 2004…need I go on?"
"Okay, Howard I get it…we messed up." Leonard ran his hand through his hair and sat down in Sheldon's desk chair. "Is it fixed now?"
"Not yet, I've got to change a few pieces of coding so that nothing gets traced back to here…Tim's also given me some additional code so that it's easier for you to add multiple parameters without having to run a search every time you want to add another layer."
"You mean that we could list everything we want it to search for and it will do it in one go?" Sheldon asked reverently, a spark of hope brightening his eyes for the first time in almost a month, and Leonard looked over at Howard for confirmation.
"If Tim's as good as his pay cheque says he is…then yeah, it should just be a matter of entering your search references and hitting the go button. I could get it all set up for you now if you tell me what you're looking for." Howard muttered without looking up from the screen, and missed the questioning glance that Leonard gave Sheldon.
"You'd need to sign a complete non-disclosure agreement before we'll give you any information." Howard looked up in amazement, he never thought he'd hear those words spilling out of Leonard's mouth rather than Sheldon's but it was Leonard looking like he was about to reveal the location of the Holy Grail whereas Sheldon just twitched nervously as he sat in his spot.
"Really? You seriously want me to sign a non-disclosure agreement for something that anyone with a computer can look up on any search engine? You've really been spending too much time with the Shelbot, Leonard."
"We're asking for something a bit more sensitive than what you'd find on a search engine, Howard; if you're not willing to sign the papers just set up the blank parameters and I'll do the rest myself." Howard's natural level of curiosity rose up a notch when Leonard didn't even crack a smile and he shifted away from the desk and held out his hand.
"Fine. I'll sign the darned papers if that's what you want."
"Sheldon?" Leonard glanced over to Sheldon who pointed a finger at the second drawer of his desk. Leonard reached over to pull out a manila folder, sifting through the various documents until he found the one with Howard's details.
"You have pre-written agreements stored away just in case? Man, you guys really have been spending way too much time together lately." Howard glanced over and saw both Raj and Penny's name on some of the papers, along with a copy that already had Leonard's signature scrawled along the bottom.
"Do you want to be part of this or not?" Leonard held the paper just out of reach and frowned over at Howard. "This is serious stuff, Howard…if you want to walk away, now would be the time." Howard snatched the paper out of Leonard's grasp and scratched his signature next to his name.
"You really ought to read things before you sign, Howard. How do you know you haven't just signed away your entire comic-book collection over to Leonard and myself?" Sheldon's mocking tone had Howard narrowing his eyes over at his friend.
"Some things just shouldn't be joked about, Sheldon."
"Of course." Sheldon lowered his head a little. "I apologise, but next time please at least pretend to read what you're signing? Others may not be as trustworthy as you may think."
"So, what have I signed up for? A little espionage on our friends in the cold? Tracking results in Geneva?" Howard rubbed his hand together in eager anticipation and saw Sheldon exchange a pleading glance with Leonard. "Oh Dear Lord, you've split up with Penny and are trying to find the woman you had a one night stand with after the Award banquet."
"Close but no cigar." Leonard quipped and pulled over Sheldon's stack of print outs from his months of fruitless searching. "Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to narrow down the results of Sheldon's original search…which resulted in how many, buddy?"
"Fifteen thousand, six hundred and forty three."
"Yeah, what he said." Leonard turned his attention back to Howard who was staring at his two friends like they had grown extra limbs.
"That's what the two of you have been doing all of these weeks? Combing through fifteen thousand names in search of some random biologist?"
"Of course not, I narrowed it down to a little over twelve thousand." Sheldon clucked his tongue and shook his head. "Now we'd like to see if your programme could narrow it down a little further by cross referencing my list against those who received an Award on the same night that I did."
"I need to know exactly what I am supposed to be searching for…I've got a little from the list that Tim gave me but I'd like to know why I'm doing this." Howard paused with his fingers hovering over the keyboard and just caught the smug expressions that were reflected on his friend's faces.
"Sorry, buddy…but I guess you should have read that paperwork a little closer. This is on a strictly need to know basis…just enter the same references that Tim gave you and we'll sift through those names and let you know if we need anything more." Leonard chuckled under his breath as he caught the muffled curses spilling from Howard's mouth as he crossed the living room to take a seat on the couch next to Sheldon, both of them sitting in identical poses with their legs propped up on the coffee table and their arms folded across their chest. "How long is the search going to take, Howard?"
"No idea…it depends on how many results it will find. It might help if we could narrow it down by sex or even a name?"
"What do you think, Sheldon?" Leonard leant over to murmur in Sheldon's ear and when Sheldon gave a slight nod, Leonard glanced over at Howard. "Female and try the first name of Amy."
"It just had to involve a woman didn't it? I might have known." Howard gave them both a smug look before he turned back to the laptop and adjusted the parameters; hearing the slight growl emanating from the couch. "Come on, it was just a joke…"
"Do you see us laughing, Wolowitz?" That low almost menacing tone almost certainly held a note of a southern drawl and Howard glanced over his shoulder to see Sheldon's azure gaze turn almost icy as he glared over at him. Howard shivered a little and quickly turned back to the keyboard, pressing the enter key with a small flourish.
"There…we should see some results appearing fairly shortly."
"Feel free to leave at any time." Leonard said with a faint smile, and Howard shook his head.
"I'd rather stay and make sure that we don't have a repeat of the last time, if that's alright with you, Sheldon?" The taller man shrugged as he left his seat to wander over to the laptop, hovering by Howard's shoulder as he watched the empty results pane anxiously. "It could take a while…Tim didn't say how long it took the first time his team ran the search."
"No rush…We've waited a long time already, we can wait a little longer." Sheldon's left eye began to twitch and Howard lept up from his chair and jabbed a finger at Sheldon's chest.
"Hah! I knew you were lying to me Sheldon! That twitch in your eye just proved it for sure."
"Dang it! Foiled by my own nervous system." Sheldon pressed a finger against his eye, and felt the jerk beneath his skin. "I guess the cat's well and truly out of the bag now."
"Tell me who we're looking for and I can adjust the search accordingly, please?"
"It's okay buddy, Howard won't say anything stupid." Leonard promised and narrowed his eyes in warning. "Will you, Howard?"
"Who am I gonna tell? You made me sign a non-disclosure agreement that you stamped as a notary!"
"We're looking for a woman that I've been searching for my whole life. All of the details that I've pieced together over the years are in the folder in the top drawer of my desk. Please put it back once you've finished with it." Sheldon retrieved the folder from his locked drawer and set it down in front of Howard, leaving his hand in place over the top until Howard glanced up in confusion. "Remember Howard, you are one stupid comment away from being completely banned from my apartment and a social pariah…"
"Jeez, Sheldon you make it sound so tempting…"
"Howard…" Leonard's impatient tone warned Howard that it was probably not a good time to make lame jokes and he held his hands up in supplication.
"Okay…enough with the attitude, I promise. Just let me read what you've put together and let me see what I have to work with." Sheldon removed his hand and wiped it down the front of his pants, giving Howard a jerky nod as he made his way back over to the couch. Leonard nudged his shoulder and silently asked whether he was okay and Sheldon mustered up a half smile in return. "Well, we've got some results from the original search…but it's still too many names."
"How many?"
"Nine thousand, three hundred and four. Let me add in the fact that we're now searching for a woman with the first name of 'Amy' or 'Amelia' and see what that gives us." Howard entered the further parameters and clicked on the return key. "Whoa. That was fast…we're now down to five hundred and three. What next?"
"What have we searched for so far?" Leonard wandered over to peer over Howard's shoulder and ran his finger over the screen. "Calfornia; recipient of Chancellor Award, female, Amy…You forgot neurobiologist!"
"Oops." Howard pulled up the code and made a few tweaks, a few seconds later they blinked at the results on the screen. "Fifty five."
"Can you narrow it down to those who specialise in addiction studies?" Sheldon joined the two men as they watched the lines of code scroll across the screen. "Thirty two." Sheldon racked his brains for something that might help pinpoint Amy's exact identity. "Will it search for their home addresses or anything like that?"
"Only if they've entered that information onto a bio or social media."
"Amy mentioned something about how we lived in fairly close proximity. Could you add a parameter to search for those living within thirty miles of Pasadena?"
"Okay, searching now." Howard watched the numbers flicker on the screen and held his breath. "Twelve. There are twelve Amy's living within Pasadena that are fit any of your specified parameters. That's not saying that your particular Amy is definitely among these women, don't forget the internet is only as reliable as the information fed into it. Perhaps your Amy isn't a fan of plastering her every move on her Facebook pages or doesn't like social recognition…there are so many variables to consider, I don't want you to be disappointed if we don't find her straight away. I've sent the file to your e-mail account Sheldon, hopefully you can find some pictures within their data and that will help you at least find out her full name."
"Thank you, Howard." Sheldon smiled his first real smile in weeks and picked up his laptop from his desk to carry it over to the couch. He opened up his e-mail account and selected the file in question, skimming through the attachment until his eyes widened in horror. "Wolowitz! There are hundreds of pages of data to search through! I thought it would just show up the twelve names?"
"I told you, this is just the prototype programme. It might have returned twelve names but you're gonna have to read through every line of those pages until you find them. Listen, I've gotta go before Ma sends out a search party for me. Why don't talk over lunch tomorrow? Maybe we can all take a few hundred pages each and highlight the possibilities for you, it might be worth bringing Raj, Stuart and Penny in on your scheme; the more eyes the better."
"Hmm, I'll think about it. Let me read through a few pages of this tonight and I'll let you know tomorrow." Sheldon barely glanced up from his laptop as Howard let himself out, his expression growing more and more concerned the further he got into the document. "This is worse than I thought…Look Leonard…"Sheldon tilted his screen so that Leonard could see what he was reading. "It's highlighted every single word in the separate parameters…Here's California…and Pasadena…primate…it goes on and on…Where are the names?"
"Let's just put it aside for tonight, it's getting late and we've both got work in the morning. Let's print it out at work and do what Howard suggests; we can use a highlighter for each parameter and then see which section contains all of the colours." Leonard gently closed the lid of Sheldon's laptop and removed it from his clutching grasp; gently steering his friend out of the living room and toward the bedrooms. "We've got it down to twelve names, that's a lot less than we had yesterday."
"Yes, but it could still take months before we even find those names."
"It's taken you nearly twenty years to get this far, what's another few months?" Leonard asked quietly and Sheldon nodded.
"I guess you're right…Good night, Leonard and thank you for your help. I'm sorry that I've kept you away from Penny for so long, I honestly didn't realise that we'd be spending this much time focusing on my needs."
"That's okay, buddy. It's only made us appreciate the time that we do get to spend together. If we bring her in on the search, I'll be spending even more evenings with her than if we were dating normally, so it's good all round." Leonard smiled happily at his roommate as they both headed into their separate bedrooms; Leonard dreaming up ways to make things right with his girlfriend, while Sheldon slipped into another restless sleep, his dreams remaining just out of reach as they had been for the last five weeks.