The Tree of Knowledge

by Daniel G. Miller

  At this point, the professor stopped, hoping that the gravity of what he had just said was sinking in.

  Albert pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. “I’m not quite sure I’m following you, Angus.”

  “Think of it this way,” said the professor, becoming increasingly animated. “In the game of chess, each player has a clear goal: to capture the other person’s king. This is equally true in real life. Every individual is motivated by a goal at every moment of the day. When you wake up, you are motivated by the desire to go to work and make money. When you blink, you are motivated by a desire to moisten your eyes. When you eat, you are motivated by the desire to quench the hunger in your belly. Consequently, the functioning of ‘society,’ as we call it, is nothing more than the interaction of competing motivations or goals in much the same way that chess is an interaction between the competing motivations of capturing each other’s king. If we see the world in this light, then it becomes clear that, with the proper tools and analysis, we can manipulate people’s actions in life in the same way they can be manipulated on a chessboard.

  “For example, in chess, it is not your opponent’s goal to lose their bishop. However, given the right incentives, your opponent may surrender their bishop to save another piece. Similarly, at a restaurant, it is not the chef’s goal in life to make you a cheeseburger. However, if a company pays him enough money, he will happily do so.”

  “But aren’t there a lot of people who have known this? Couldn’t anyone do this?” said Ying.

  Turner issued a knowing smile. “There are many people that can shoot a basketball, but there are but a handful of people in the world who have the ability to do it with such precision that it becomes valuable. So it is with the tree. The only people in the world that can realize the potential of the tree in real time are the so-called mental calculators like ourselves. But even for people like us, it’s not enough to be able to perform multiple calculations in one’s head, you have to practice putting those calculations into action. You follow?”

  “I’m following,” said Albert.

  “Good. So once I considered that every person, including myself, has a motivation at all times and that my fate, as well as everyone else’s, was determined by the way in which these competing motivations interact, I began to experiment to see to what extent I could logically map out and then manipulate the motivations of the individuals around me. In doing this, I mimicked the way I think about chess. I drew a game tree outlining possible scenarios. If I do this, he will do this. If I do that, he will do that, and so on. I would have meetings with people and could anticipate the entire give-and-take, steering it where I wanted it to go.

  “Just as I had theorized, I found that I could achieve any goal if I could determine the motivations or goals of the person with whom I was dealing—my opponent, as it were. I’m ashamed to say that, at the time, I found this new power of manipulation quite intoxicating. I can’t possibly explain to you what a powerful feeling it is to know that you can manipulate any individual to your whims at any given time.

  “In the spring one year, an exceptionally beautiful and intelligent student of mine fell in love with me, and I with her. She had a face that was innocence and ruthlessness all wrapped up in one . . . like . . . like a child holding a weapon. And the clothes she wore. The clothes she wore made it worse. She would wear these light summer dresses like something you would see on a girl skipping rope, yet with this incredibly sensual body underneath.”

  Turner’s eyes drifted to a far-off place.

  “Even her eyes held little flecks of bright yellow surrounded by dark brown that appeared almost wolflike. As you might imagine, every man at Princeton was in love with her, and I remember feeling so blessed every day that she spent time with me because it felt like she chose me above everyone else. She exuded such a powerful combination of youth, vibrancy, ambition, and intelligence that you just wanted to cling to it in the hopes that it would rub off on you in some way.”

  Ying touched her chest and gave an “aww.” Albert rolled his eyes at her romanticism.

  “We would talk for hours until the early morning about life, love, mathematics, economics, chess, and the world. She hung on my every word and soaked up information like a sponge. So much so that I worried I would one day run out of knowledge to give her, and she would leave me. Over time, I grew more afraid. She would ask me about topics such as politics and war that were far outside my area of expertise. I could feel her pulling away from me more and more each day, so in desperation, I brought her into my confidence and told her about the ‘Tree of Knowledge,’ as I had taken to calling it.”

  Albert sat up straighter as he thought back to the first words on the decoded logic tree.

  “At first, she greeted me with the same healthy skepticism with which the two of you are greeting me right now. However, as I began to explain how information combined with game tree analysis could allow you to manipulate people, her interest greatly increased. I ran the calculations. I knew that she might abuse the Tree, but I let my heart win.

  “When she had drained every piece of useful information about the Tree from me, she left. No goodbye, or thank you. I just returned home from class one day, and she was gone. I was devastated. I often joke about being ‘married to my students,’ but in reality, it was her . . . I was married to her.”

  Ying reached forward and patted Turner’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Professor.”

  The professor took a long drink from his lemonade, looked off into the distance, and then a lonely smile crept across his face.

  “For fourteen years, I tried—and failed—to forget about her. Then, in the fall one year, a young high school student walked into my classroom. I took one look at those coffee-colored eyes with the yellow flecks, the wolf eyes, and I knew it was her daughter. She was just as smart as her mother and had the same tenacious desire for knowledge. She was a championship chess player, and within weeks, she, too, began to ask me about the Tree.

  “As her knowledge of the Tree and its powers increased, this young woman began to explore the branch of the Tree that I had for so long ignored: violence. She would ask me to practice using the principles of the Tree for violent means. How to use it in hand-to-hand combat, in security, even in war. I told her that I would only do it if it stayed between the two of us and that she promised not to use it on anyone else. She promised, but again, I suspected that it was a promise she wouldn’t be able to keep. I just couldn’t stand to let her go. I had seen her mother walk out of my life, and I didn’t think I could take it again.”

  “What do you mean when you say using the Tree for violence, Professor Turner?” said Ying. “Like in combat?”

  “Yes. The Tree of Knowledge can be both a tool and a weapon. Person-to-person combat is just the tip of the iceberg. The Tree can be used to defend yourself, incapacitate and harm others, and even kill. It can also be used in war strategy and other forms of mass violence. Interestingly, when you use the Tree, what you find is that the most common uses of violence are the least effective. For example, bank robbers most often rob banks using guns. This is absurdly ill considered because it does not incapacitate your enemy unless you shoot everyone in the bank—and it does nothing to protect you. It’s the equivalent of taking your queen out in chess without any means of protecting her. A much better approach would be to simply gas the entire bank as you enter and wear gas masks. This incapacitates your enemy and protects you. If you were hell-bent on using guns, it would be much better to procure a secure location across from the bank and use long-range snipers to take out the people in the bank and then rob the bank. Again, this would remove your enemy without risking harm to yourself.

  “Another example is poison. Poison is grossly underutilized. Why kill someone in public with a gun when you could simply offer them a stick of gum laced with poison and be done with it?”

  “Do you think that’s why the thi
ef used chloroform to kill the security guard at the bank, Professor?” asked Albert.

  “Certainly,” said Turner. “And that is why I know Eva was behind this. More important, Albert, it’s why you need to go to the police before she realizes what she’s done.”

  Chapter 12

  The tires of Albert’s white Chevy Bolt spun in the gravel of Angus Turner’s driveway as he pulled out of the circle. A cloud of gray dust floated up around the driveway like mist, which added to the ominous feeling snaking through his stomach. As he screeched onto the main road, Albert replayed the scene inside Turner’s house. The look on the aging academic’s face gnawed at him. He remembered the last time he’d seen that expression on someone’s face.

  Until the age of eight, Albert had lived in a state of ignorant bliss. His loving parents had raised him in a beautiful three-bedroom house in a small college town in southern Minnesota with the modest name of Northfield. The bright-white paint, set off by the house’s green shutters, gave the impression of Southern gentility in a northern Midwestern town. The backyard had fruit trees a boy could climb; the front yard, carefully tended flower beds. Both his parents had been professors of mathematics at the two colleges in town: Carleton and St. Olaf. His mother taught at Carleton, which was the more prestigious institution, and his father instructed at St. Olaf. Both believed passionately in the power of education and, more specifically, mathematics to solve the world’s problems. As such, they insisted on homeschooling Albert so that he could get the benefits of “higher-level” instruction.

  While this was highly unusual in Northfield because of its strong, college-influenced school system, Albert loved it. He adored his parents and eagerly anticipated his morning lessons. His mother would teach him Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and his father Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Albert reveled in the wildly divergent teaching styles of his mother and father. His mother was a tactician who believed that the essence of mathematics was technical skill and proficiency. She would push Albert to do problems according to certain rules, to show his work, and to do it at greater levels of speed. He especially enjoyed Fridays when his mother would give him a set of one hundred problems and time him to see how fast he could do them. When he did well, she would take him down the block to the local ice-cream shop, and the two of them would enjoy root beer floats. He could still feel the warm sun and see the soft smile on his mom’s pretty face and the sleek, dark wave of her hair as the two of them quietly, contently enjoyed desserts.

  His father, on the other hand, believed in the magical and creative power of mathematics. Instead of focusing on mathematical rules or problem-solving speed, he would encourage Albert not just to solve a problem but to understand its core nature. He would always give the example of multiplication tables, which he thought were a destructive influence. “Cages for the mind,” he called them as he paced around the room, his tall, stork-like figure throwing off energy, his narrow face alight with feeling. “Any idiot can memorize seven times eight is fifty-six,” he would say, “but until you understand at a gut level why it is fifty-six, you don’t understand math.” Albert would just giggle watching the old man get upset about multiplication tables.

  His father loved logic puzzles and games. The two would play chess on Sunday mornings, at which Albert always excelled. His father would then tell him fantastic tales of mathematical concepts and their almost religious connection to nature. He would instruct Albert on the Fibonacci sequence, a string of numbers that appeared in the most fascinating natural settings, from the flowering of the artichoke to the arrangement of a pine cone. They would take long walks through the woods behind the campus and pick up pine cones to see how the spirals grew according to the famous sequence. His father would point out spiderwebs, pond ripples, clouds, moss on tree bark, and explain how mathematics described their patterns. The boy learned about numbers; he also learned to look carefully at everything around him. He treasured these walks with his father and often hoped they would never end.

  But they did end.

  One morning, Albert stumbled down the creaking stairs of his house in search of his usual bowl of Cheerios. Surprisingly, as he breezed through the living room, he saw both his parents sitting together on the living room couch. The image struck him as odd because neither of his parents ever used that room. It was one of those decorative living rooms that went unused unless company was over. The colors of the room were dark—dark red and blue upholstery, dark wood, curtains pulled—and his parents, even his fair-complexioned father, looked dark as well. The jarring nature of the scene caused Albert to stop and lock eyes with his father. His eyes were heavy; the boy could see he was exhausted. Scared, Albert turned his attention to his mother. The expression he saw on her face terrified him. The woman who had so boisterously taught Albert and loved his father had been reduced to rubble. Her eyes were dull, her face ashen. The only sign of life was the flicker as her gaze met his and a twitch of her bloodless lips that was more grimace than smile.

  His parents could see the fear in Albert’s eyes and wasted no time in delivering the news. They were getting a divorce. It wasn’t Albert’s fault. They both loved him very much, but they had grown apart, and it was time to move on. His father had decided to take a very prestigious teaching job at a university in China. He would be leaving at the end of the month. Albert could fly out and see him whenever he wanted, but most of the time, he would be living with his mother.

  Albert pleaded with his father. Tears streaming down his face, he begged and bargained to keep his father from leaving. He would do better in math. He would clean the house every day. But his father just shrugged and said this was something “he needed to do.” Albert then turned to his mom for help—help making his dad understand that he needed to stay. His mother just held Albert and looked at him with that face, that blank look of despair.

  It was this same expression that Albert had seen on Professor Turner’s face. He, too, looked as if he had been crushed and abandoned. And what made the expression on Turner’s face even more affecting was that, to Albert, Professor Turner had been an idol, someone who could not be crushed, defeated, or abandoned. His mastery of the classroom made him like a sports hero who always prevailed on the playing field. Professor Turner seemed to float above the challenges of life that impeded mere mortals.

  And his despair had come over a woman and her daughter. Eva? Could it be the same Eva?

  Albert thought of the scrawny little high school student with whom he had shared a class early on in his college career. He had treasured her. She was a lovely young girl, with a smile and laugh that made you forget where you were and carried you back to a time when the world wasn’t serious. He was twenty, but he still felt the draw of a friend who made him feel young. Albert always felt slightly uncouth spending time with a fourteen-year-old. He was aware of how other students looked at him when the two of them would walk and giggle together after class. Even Professor Turner stared at the two of them with a parent’s watchful eye. So, when at the end of class, she had invited him to her quinceañera, Albert realized that he had to put a stop to it. As the words fumbled out of her mouth, he could see the love in her eyes and wanted nothing more than to give her everything she wanted. But it was dangerous and confusing, full of pitfalls. So, he did the “right thing” and told her he couldn’t go. In the fourteen years since that day, Albert had thought of it many times and regretted it every time. Seeing the effect that she and her mother had on the giant that was Angus Turner made his regret even more piercing.

  Albert angrily slammed down the accelerator as though he could outrun the pain of his past. In his youth, he had fought the battle between logic and emotion and had vanquished emotion, or so he’d thought. Now, as the car tore down the country road toward the Princeton police station, Albert sensed that emotion was back and chasing him. He turned his attention to the rearview and noticed a powerful silver sedan turn off a side road and accelerate behind him. T
he glimmering Rolls-Royce followed ten feet from the Bolt’s rear bumper and showed no signs of abating.

  Am I being tailed? Should I speed up? Slow down? His mind went into overdrive, his hands trembling lightly on the wheel.

  Albert’s nerves temporarily subsided when the police station came into view. He took a sharp right into the parking lot. The Rolls turned in behind him. A stranger emerged from the car in a black trench coat and dark fedora, giving off a Vader-like impression that rattled Albert’s delicate constitution.

  He quickly grabbed Detective Weatherspoon’s file off the passenger seat, exited the car with his head down, and prepared to bolt into the station. He looked up to see the stranger standing directly in front of him, blocking his path. Terrified, Albert glanced back to see if it was too late to jump back in his car, but before he could make a move, the stranger took off her fedora to reveal an absolutely stunning woman with rich black hair. Her smiling face and big white teeth gleamed in the sun.

  “Dilbert! It’s so good to see you.”

  Chapter 13

  Angus Turner and Ying Koh sat in silence. The ticktock of Turner’s grandfather clock pierced the quiet like the crack of a whip with each move of the second hand. Then, without a word, the professor jumped from his seat, eyes gleaming, and darted down the hallway to his study. Not knowing quite what to do, Ying continued to sit and quietly sip her lemonade while looking around the room in a state of confused innocence. The Tree of Knowledge? Can it be real? What does this mean for me? For my family? For the world? She could hear the professor shuffling papers in the back room but dared not disturb what looked like divine inspiration. Ying had been in academia long enough and had enough fits of intellectual fire herself to understand that there were times when just staying out of the way was the best move.