By cmglee, US government, Clindberg, Palosirkka - Comparison of cartography surface development.svg, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
“Look, I don't understand why everyone is mad at H.F. for wrecking shop and for Henry Halleck now completing the wrecking of the shop – that's what happens when you are corrupt and think you can put a square peg in a round hole. They all need to be mad at Commissioner Orton Thomas.”
“Yes, but Robert, it's a bit late for that – he's dead.”
“And that was the expected outcome! It's not H.F.'s fault that nobody read his resume and paid attention to what happened to the last group of people that thought they could be his boss and corrupt him!”
“But Robert, you are an Army man yourself, and you are 58. You get it – you know you are a square peg, and you are basically unemployable in the rounded-off turns of civilian employment, especially since Lofton County seems to be quite corrupt. I mean, I'm from San Francisco, city and county, and we have definitely had our moments of corruption, but I like to think somebody would have read Henry Fitzhugh Lee's resume and realized that's the Big One the minute you put him in any authority. But even our cousin didn't realize it was going to get that bad.”
Quietly, unobserved by his grandparents, six-year-old Grayson Ludlow had brought in his Legos in his little red wagon and was listening to their conversation. What got his attention was getting a square peg in a round hole, so he just as quietly went away and got his book of 2D and 3D shapes from his room, and sat studying them for a long time, and then went and looked at a book about transforming shapes and mapmaking that his grandfather had.
“OK, Lord, I think I got it,” he said. “I think I got it – we just gotta do a quad sphere in reverse.”
A quadrilateralized spherical cube is a projection mapping concept represented by a sphere inside a cube – but Grayson had no way of knowing that. He took the book and just went to look at his Legos and noticed that while they were rectangular, each of them had round plugs to fit into the next one.
“OK, so, these are kinda square with round holes and round pegs – we're already half way there.”
Grayson's big brother ten-year-old Andrew noticed what he was looking at.
“Squaring the circle today, Grayson?” he said.
“Almost. Papa and Grandma were talking about getting a square peg into a round hole, and that you can't do it.”
“Yeah, I heard that – I was looking it up on the computer. Folks have been trying to get circles into squares and squares into circles for a long time. They say it's impossible.”
“Yeah, I saw in the map book that the Greeks said that stuff like a quad sphere couldn't be done, but they didn't have computers and they didn't have modeling clay – I got this,” Grayson said.
Grayson and Andrew's big sister eleven-year-old Eleanor went to get Capt. R.E. and Thalia Ludlow.
“Papa, Grandma, you need to get in here – Grayson is about to solve a problem the Greeks said was impossible. He's about to get a square peg into a round hole, and thus, square the circle!”
By this time, Grayson had gotten his modeling clay, rolled a ball, put a square Lego in it, and then rolled the clay back into a perfect ball and then went outside and stuck it into a knothole in the wood.
“There,” he said. “That's how you do a square anything in a round hole. A quad sphere is a cube with a sphere in it, and this is a sphere with a square in it. It's a square sphere. If you need to do a square peg, you make half a sphere, you put the peg in the half, you put the half in the round hole, and boom! Done!”
“The mysteries of the ages are all so simple when Grayson explains them,” Mrs. Ludlow said with a smile as her husband called every ounce of command presence that he had to keep himself together.
“I don't see why these big important people haven't figured this out in like two thousand years or something,” Grayson said.
“But, Grayson, God won't just give this kind of blessing to everyone,” Eleanor said. “You're trying to be more like the Lord Jesus, Who was a carpenter and is still building a place for His own to live to come live in peace. Other people are out there trying to conquer the world and stuff.”
“They didn't need to know all that,” Andrew said. “Actually, Papa, you may need to talk to the Army and have this put under top secret.”
“You know what, Andrew: you're right,” Capt. Ludlow said. “Grayson, we may need to keep this under wraps for a long time.”
“Well, that's OK, because I didn't really want to be in the Guinness Book of World Records anyway,” Grayson said as he packed up his little red wagon. “There's nothing to build in there, it's too long, and ain't nobody got time for all that because I got more stuff to build, so, gottagobye.”
And Grayson took his Legos and was gone, leaving Andrew shaking his head.
“2,500 years,” he said. “2,500 years of folks trying to figure out how to get a square peg in a round hole, and the Lord gives it to Grayson.”
“'And a little child shall lead them,'” Eleanor said.
“If only Orton Thomas had known this,” Mrs. Ludlow purred, “that poor man would be alive today.”
Mrs. Ludlow had lived through many of her husband's nightmares … it was nice that he kept on waking up laughing his big musical laugh, at different points all through the relaxed night.