Fiction
Speculative
It was the speech he would never give. The oft-bent yellow creases of the paper crinkled as he folded it and placed it back in the breast pocket of his suit. No one would ever find the speech. After all, who used paper and pencil anymore? It was obvious to everyone that the new implant linking humanity to computers was much better equipped to advance technology. Xavier Brown’s secret was safe.
Xavier stepped onto the platform, another of his inventions. The machine detected his presence, scanned his wrist tag for an identity, checked his appointment calendar, and then projected his image to the hundreds who had been invited to hear his latest announcement. Activating the connection to the platform always made him dizzy as his brain adjusted to the pictures before him.
To the untrained eye, it appeared he stood in an auditorium with listeners stretched away into the hazy distance. By operating controls on a podium, or, for those talented enough to manipulate their electrical implants, he could select any member of the audience and bring them to the front of his field of vision: the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans. But no, no aliens. Xavier laughed. The audience didn’t contain aliens…yet. Who knew what lay in the future?
"Fellow scientists." When Xavier spoke, he could detect a small, faint whine as his implant translated the words. He smirked, glad it couldn’t translate his thoughts as well. He had been careful that the implant only processed laryngeal signals for speech translation. Being the "Miracle Worker," as the public called Xavier, had its advantages. While they debated the ethics of what science should and shouldn’t do, he never told them what he could do. Among other things, he didn’t want a machine to read his thoughts.
"Fellow scientists, space has long stood before us as the greatest obstacle. Great though our abilities may be, we are still limited by the need for transport. We must send a ship to reach new sectors of the universe, or we must wait for light to bring vague reflections of it to us."
From his peripheral vision he caught sight of Amy, late as usual, taking her seat in the front row. Xavier stumbled over the next few words, sending an annoying static hiss through the translator. He gripped the edges of the podium and forced himself into controlled silence. If only he could invent a solution to his clumsiness with women.
She blinked at him with large, innocent eyes, pushing a strand of dark hair over one ear. Xavier spied an impish grin forming at one corner of her mouth, and had to clear his throat before he could continue.
"All transport as we know it requires mass to push or pull upon another mass. Even the most modern of spaceships still operates under the principles of propulsion. It is a zero sum game. Even when people think of other dimensions, they think of them as fixed with respect to our three physical dimensions.
"But what if, rather than one universe where all dimensions are fixed together, there were an infinite number of universes, each with three unique physical dimensions, moving with respect to ours."
Xavier keyed up the animation he had prepared, where a comical stick figure stood inside a box with other boxes racing about him. The figure jumped from one box to the next, waiting for it to carry him to a new place before jumping boxes again. The audience chuckled, and Xavier glanced toward Amy, taking a moment to appreciate the beauty of her smile.
"My idea would be nothing more than this, a cartoon, were it not for the addition of some simple math."
Again the audience laughed, and Xavier heard the pompous whisperings of those who approved of their positions among the most brilliant minds. If only they knew.
"Alright." Xavier was satisfied with the sense of drama he had created, and prepared to move on to the technical details. "We begin, of course, with the AdS5 bulk and the work of Senovilla showing the transition from a Lorentzian to a purely Euclidean signature. Given that this transition from time to space is asymptotic, the implication is that we can travel with almost infinite speed if we can find the perpendicular path to a nearby space…"
By the time he finished, almost everyone slept. Xavier spent the last part of his lecture scanning through the audience members to amuse himself. Drs. Illych and Rosen took turns nudging each other as first one, then the other, fell into snoring. Dr. Henson sketched graffiti on his computer screen, and one of the Cambridge professors sent erotic messages to his mistress. Even Amy slouched in her chair, her head rolling to one side, her mouth hanging wide open. It didn’t matter. He thought her irresistibly cute no matter what she did.
With one last flourish, Xavier put together a long string of nonsensical terminology involving the eigenvalues of type IIB strings, concluding this proved he had found a way to jump from one space to the next.
Then he stopped and enjoyed the silence. Relativity prevailed, as no more than ten seconds passed, yet he soaked in an hour’s worth of delight. Dr. Rosen took his turn to nudge Dr. Illych, and then realized Xavier had stopped talking. Something rumbled in his throat until he found words.
"Of course we need time to fully absorb your comments, Dr. Brown, but this is truly astounding. If I understand you correctly…"
Xavier allowed another uncomfortable silence before he completed the sentence. "I’m sure you do, Dr. Rosen. We can travel anywhere in the universe in zero time."
"Astounding!" Dr. Rosen clapped his hands. With the same motion, he tried to slyly nudge Dr. Illych again. The impulse of his exclamation started the remainder of the audience from their stupor, and Dr. Rosen led them all in a standing ovation.
Amy pressed a key on her panel to signal she had a question.
"Yes, Dr. Stevens," Xavier nodded in her direction.
"Do you have a test to prove your theory?"
"Of course, Dr. Stevens, but I must keep those details confidential for the time being to protect Catron, my employer."
"Of course." Amy nodded back.
"Rest assured, however—" he remained fixed on her, "—that we will soon be issuing work orders to the properly qualified subcontractors." His fingers played nervously about the edges of the podium. "And this time I shall require an assistant."
The audience hesitated in a moment of confusion. He could imagine their thoughts. What? I thought Xavier Brown always worked alone. Then the implications sank in. Xavier noted the smiles as they realized the prestige one could claim from being his assistant. It meant the rise of a new Erdos number. Again they registered their hearty support, but Xavier had only one business relationship on his mind.
Xavier studied the energy well with frustration. "Microcosmal synthetic black hole, my foot," he muttered. Sometimes hand waving got him in trouble. The small energy wells he had adapted to consumer use did not scale as his "theory" predicted, and this particular model chose a poor moment to malfunction. He pulled some note cards from his pocket, studying the stream of numbers and muttering to himself.
"I’m ready," Amy said.
"Yes, yes," he spat back. Drawing a deep breath through his nose, he forced a smile. "I’m sorry. Something’s not quite right."
"It’s not the data link from SynCorp, is it?" she asked with horror.
"No, of course not," he reassured her. Amy worked for SynCorp, one of the many companies who jostled for recognition as Xavier’s most important partner. He had chosen her as the assistant for this project, and was sure SynCorp paid her well. Almost weekly she appeared on the "Spectral Hour sponsored by SynCorp" to update the world on the progress of the transporter. The commercials seemed almost as ridiculous as the speculative tales through which they were salted.
"It’s the energy well," Xavier explained. "It’s larger than any I’ve worked with before, and I don’t think the coil is properly sized."
"But I’m sure it was scaled to your specifications."
"Yes, yes." His irritation returned. Again he ran through the sequence of numbers.
"What are you doing?"
"Get the coil from the office energy well. Let’s run it in parallel."
Amy licked her lips. Her suspicious eyes glanced between Xavier and the cards as he nervously folded and unfolded them in his hands. "Alright," she said.
With Amy gone, Xavier spun and headed for the back of the lab. With one last glance over his shoulder, he reached behind a clutter of electrical equipment, feeling for a hidden switch. Once pressed, a door opened, and he passed within, closing it behind him.
Xavier managed to return only moments before Amy came back with the coil. The line of numbers on the card had been scratched and replaced with new ones. His confidence had returned, and he smiled at Amy, giving her a wink.
"I do apologize. It seems I forgot an integration constant. A silly, freshman mistake. I sometimes wish others could help me with the calculations."
"You always refuse."
"Yes, but the experiments are getting more and more complicated. This is the first time I’ve used an assistant, so I’m still adjusting." He directed the conversation back to the device she held in her hands. "We don’t need that. We just need to adjust the coil a few centimeters higher in the field."
Amy’s shoulders relaxed, and she quickly dropped the extra coil on a desk. "I’m relieved. It seemed an odd solution to me."
"Did it?" Xavier gave her a curious eye. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, but when she frowned, he pulled them free to dangle like useless tools at his side. "Let’s adjust the coil."
"I’ll do it." Amy grabbed a wrench from the shadow board and soon moved the coil into its new position. "Ready."
Xavier nodded, and walked to the control panel. Turning to watch a small wooden block lying beneath the coil, he moved a lever forward as if lifting a great weight. The air around the block began to shimmer, and then purple streaks reached out like the fingers of a hungry ghoul. When they touched the block, a sharp pop rebounded about the room.
Both Xavier and Amy spun to look at a platform sitting on the opposite side of the room. The wooden block had moved to its assigned spot.
"It worked!" Xavier shouted and jumped in the air.
"It’s alive! It’s alive!" Amy joked.
"Huh?"
"You need to get out more," she laughed. Crossing the room, she lifted the block with lead tongs and placed it in an analyzer. "It’ll be a few hours before we know if the trip affected the makeup of the block."
Xavier blushed and stuck his hands in his pockets. Looking at the floor, he managed a few quiet words. "Should we get something to eat?"
Amy raised her eyebrows and studied him with amusement. He felt as if she knew the real reason he asked the question.
"Where?" she asked.
The coffee shop around the corner would seem a casual suggestion, but he wanted to take her somewhere else. "Delmonico’s?"
She reacted with honest surprise. "Delmonico’s?"
"It is a big step in the project." Xavier gestured with a feeble hand toward the analyzer.
"If we haven’t turned a block of wood to stone."
"Then we’d be alchemists. Either way..."
Amy accepted his pathetic joke with a wide grin. "Alright. Delmonico’s it is. But you need to give me time to change first."
Xavier struggled to keep his eyes off the plunging neckline of her little black dress. He continually looked toward the waiters lined up by the kitchen door. Several times their waiter had responded, coming to the table, and Xavier was forced to shake his head and send him back.
Amy seemed pleased with it all. She nodded toward the violinist. "This is lovely. No one has ever brought me here before."
"We just passed a major milestone," Xavier tried to keep up the façade. How he wished she would say something plain enough to avoid misinterpretation. The dress seemed to be a message, but still he hesitated. For a moment his hand went to his pocket, tempted to check the number sequence, but then he chided himself. It couldn’t possibly work that way.
"Why are you so nervous?" Amy asked.
"The mistake with the coil still bothers me."
"Is the Miracle Worker questioning himself?"
"All the time." Being honest with Amy rushed across him like a spring breeze pushing back winter clouds. He started to say more, and then changed his mind.
She reached out across the table and patted his hand. "I’m glad to see you’re human. With your list of accomplishments, you could easily become an arrogant jerk."
"Is being a wimp better than being a jerk?"
"It is." Amy lifted her glass to hide a smile, but her eyes watched him. He felt pressed to make a witty reply. After a delicate sip, she set the glass down again. "I was nervous about working with you at first, but I’ve enjoyed it."
"So have I."
"Then I’m not just another pretty face?" She tilted her head to over-emphasize batting her eyelashes.
Xavier laughed at her flirtation. "You’re much more than a pretty face." He sat back in his chair, pleased with himself for not fumbling the reply. Confidence to say such a thing had always escaped him until now. His adrenalin surged to new heights when he noticed her blushing, and he leaned forward as if pressing an attack. "Though I must admit your IQ was not the only reason I chose you."
The drop in his stomach matched her fallen jaw.
"Well, at least you didn’t say, ‘Join me and we shall rule the galaxy.’"
"I…" he stammered. "What I meant was…"
"It’s alright." She waved him off, and then turned, placing her arm on the back of the chair to look out over the room.
He couldn’t let the moment go. He needed to regain her attention. "I have something I want to show you."
"Ha," she snorted, still watching the waiters and the violinist. "I haven’t fallen for that line since this grad student in college…"
"No, really."
Xavier studied the jumble of equipment guarding the switch. Though their trip from the restaurant was aided by the speed of one of his glide car inventions, Amy noticed his sullen mood grow even more quickly. She guessed that he now regretted offering to show her whatever secret he kept. Little bound her to him, and she knew he had been betrayed in the past.
Despite his spectacular success, Xavier didn’t seem one to take risks. He had a nervous habit of patting the pockets of his pants every few minutes, as if they could telepathically convey a message to him.
"Looking for your keys?" Amy asked. The sarcasm in her voice did nothing to assuage his mood.
"No." He turned to face her head on. "But I must be honest. I may have been a bit rash. This does not seem the best time to show you my private office."
"Everyone is jealous of you. Do you know that?" she asked.
"Yes, I know. I’ve suffered many shallow friendships."
"Everyone," she raised a finger, "except me." Then she stepped forward and placed a kiss on his cheek.
"How can I be sure of that?" he asked.
"You can’t."
Amy knew she had to prove herself, and decided to give Xavier the time he needed. She turned and started to walk away. "I’ll be here tomorrow morning, promptly at seven. We can go over the results of the analyzer together."
"No," Xavier’s voice came like the sharp pop of a gun. "I’ll show you." He pressed the switch, and the door opened. "After you."
Amy looked first at Xavier, then toward the open door. She chewed her lip. "Really, I can wait."
"Please." He motioned toward the open door.
"If my body is found in a dumpster in the morning, my mother shall be very displeased."
A brief, painful smile flashed across Xavier’s face, but he gave no response.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped through the door.
The room was enormous, larger than the lab from which they had just come. Row after row of computers filled it except for a narrow aisle near the door. At one end of the aisle a plain wooden desk had been wedged between the computers and the wall, and atop the desk were stacks and stacks of note cards.
Amy shrugged. "I don’t see anything unusual. A lot of computers, but…you’re Xavier Brown."
Hearing the click of his heels on the floor, she spun toward Xavier, making her dark hair fly about her shoulders.
Xavier walked to the desk, and motioned to the cards, then looked to Amy with a pain so evident she cringed. Frowning, she took slow, measured steps, trying to make out the content of the cards. The oddity of it grew upon her the closer she came. Why would he use note cards? They were all hand-written. Why didn’t he use a computer printout? Or, better yet, load the data directly into his implant? After all, he had invented the implants—the next revolution in computing.
She closed in on the desk, and randomly lifted a card. A stream of meaningless numbers met her gaze. Twisting up her mouth, she carefully replaced the card from where it had come, and lifted another. More numbers. She scanned the desk. Thousands upon thousands of numbers were scrawled across the faces of the cards.
When she looked toward Xavier, he was waiting.
"This," he pointed to one stack of cards, "is my logistical theory for the glider car coupling algorithm. This," he pointed to another stack, "proves the integrability of the Duffing equation. And this," he paused with shining eyes, touching the stack like a mother caressing her newborn, "is transportation theory."
"I…" Amy fumbled for words. "I don’t get it."
"Neither do I," he answered, and then pointed to the computers. "Do you remember the anecdote about an infinite number of monkeys?"
"What are you saying?" Amy realized she hung on the verge of babbling; a swimming sensation prevented her from forming coherent thoughts.
Xavier reached out and took her hand. "Building on the work of Gödel, I have proven that certain physical phenomena are unreachable by reason. It’s not that the universe is complex. Rather, it is unknowable. I don’t understand how the implants work, or energy wells, or the transporter."
"But you wrote the equations."
Xavier smirked, nodding his head as he stared at the floor. "I made them up. That’s why I built these computers. They guess at things the human mind could never conceive, churning out stream upon stream of numbers, randomly combining them in new ways. Each number represents a specific machination. I study them. On occasion, it guesses correctly. When it does, I invent the math to support the conclusion. No one ever checks my math, because the tests prove me right. It makes people feel as if we’ve accomplished something."
"We have," Amy raised a meager protest.
Xavier leaned over and returned the kiss she had given him earlier. "You see, it gives people hope to think we’re going somewhere."
"We are going somewhere."
"The computers are guessing, Amy."
"I don’t care what you say. You’ve done amazing things."
"It’s all a lie." Xavier sat on the edge of the desk with slumped shoulders. Reaching to the pocket in his suit coat, he withdrew a crumpled piece of paper.
"What," she asked, "is there a demon living in your computer, feeding you the answers?" Her words mixed with a nervous laugh, and she looked toward the door, wondering if she should leave.
"No." Xavier gave her an odd look as if her suggestion were lunacy. "It’s just a computer." He waved the paper toward her. "I’ve wanted to tell people the truth for so long, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I feel like the Wizard of Oz, waiting for someone to tear down the curtain and do what I lack the courage to do."
Amy cringed and backed away toward the door.
Xavier frowned, noting her retreat. "Are you leaving?"
"You’re scaring me," she said, reaching back to feel the chilled steel of the doorframe against her fingers.
"You should be scared." He stuffed the paper back into his suit pocket and lifted a stack of cards from the desk, reaching them out to her. "It’s too late for speeches. The computer guessed wrong."
She took the cards as if Moses were handing her the stone tablets from Sinai, but all they contained was another meaningless stream of numbers.
"I just found this a month ago," he said.
She didn’t know whether to cry on his shoulder or run from the room. It seemed impossible, but she knew what the numbers meant. The meaning did not come to her through her eyes, but from some unknown place deep in her mind. She could not explain in words what she saw, but the concepts shone clearly like the sun from a blue sky. The sun. The energy wells did not draw their power from background radiation as Xavier claimed in his original paper. They drew from the sun, and it was collapsing.
"What do we do?" Amy asked.
"You have intuition." Xavier seized her by the shoulders. "I saw you do it earlier with the coil, and you did it again just now." She looked away, but Xavier put a hand to her chin and directed her gaze back to his. "Didn’t you? I only have guessing, but you have intuition."
Terror crawled from his fingers to spread over her skin, burrowing into every pore. The door seemed a distant goal, and escape an impossibility.
"We could use the transporter," he continued, "to take the energy wells into other star fields. But first it has to work." He pushed her back out into the other room, pointing to the wooden block in the analyzer. "The range of the transporter is limited by mass. The larger the object, the shorter the distance it can go. That block will never be able to do more than cross a room. Something the size of a person would only move a millimeter." Again the cards were in his hand, and he shoved them before her eyes. "What do we do?"
Numbers leapt from the paper, piercing her eyes like spears. Her own screams chased her toward unconsciousness. The numbers swam after her, pursuing her thoughts as they scattered in panic, racing to hide in the corners of her mind.
"Amy?" Xavier’s voice jumped from one number to the next like the stick man in the animation. "Amy? Come back. Please come back. I didn’t mean to scare you. I don’t want to hurt you, but we have to do this. I understand. It’s too much for you. I don’t want to lose you, so I have an idea. I’ve switched your implant over to read your thoughts. I have a bank of computers that has been sitting idle… We can map your mind into the computer to enhance your intuitive powers."
"Xavier, no. Please." Her whimper languished like a pathetic child without the ability to resist.
"I love you, Xavier."
Xavier looked toward the computer and frowned. He sat at the desk, tapping a pencil on one of his note cards. "Get back to work, AmyComp. Time is short."
"Alright." The electronic voice attempted to mimic a sigh. "But I do wish you’d let me out of the room occasionally. I did so enjoy Delmonico’s."
"How am I supposed to do that?" The frequency of his tapping increased. "You’re just a computer."
The human Amy stepped into the computer room from the lab. "I heard that stupid thing. Did you have to make it exactly like me?"
Xavier smiled and rose from the desk. Crossing the room he placed a tender kiss on her lips. "I couldn’t risk diminishing your intuitive powers, dear." Then he raised his eyebrows. "Did you hear what AmyComp said?"
"Yeah, yeah," Amy groaned. "I heard it. Get back to work."
"Is it wrong?" he asked.
She stared at him with a wicked smile hanging at the edges of her mouth. "No, AmyComp got it right."
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Copyright 2008, Resha Caner. All rights reserved. Surprise! Resha Caner is a pseudonym. Since he has not yet summoned the courage to starve for the sake of beauty, by day Caner takes off his costume to work as a mild-mannered engineer. Yet, under cover of darkness, he writes. To date these efforts have yielded him selection as a semi-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest, and editor's choice at "Bewildering Stories". His work has also appeared in "AlienSkin", "Fear and Trembling", "The Muse Marquee", "Haruah", "MindFlights", "Constellation", "EveryDay Fiction", "SNReview", and "Residential Aliens", with more to come at "Rose & Thorn" and "Anotherealm".
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