The Immortality Code

by Douglas E. Richards

  “Understood.”

  “Dr. Keane published her theory on Monday,” continued the colonel with a scowl. “Three entire mornings ago. No one in our organization even got around to reading it until last night. That’s how off the radar she was. Our watch-lists are quite extensive, but not only wasn’t she on the primary list, she wasn’t on the secondary or tertiary lists either.”

  “So basically, you thought the bag boy at Ralph’s had a better chance of coming up with a game-changing tech breakthrough than her?”

  Hubbard couldn’t help but smile. “Thanks for not rubbing it in,” she said wryly. “But you’re not wrong. After one of our lower-ranked scientists read the work last night, she immediately kicked it up to our chief quantum scientist for review, urgent priority. He spent hours on it, convinced that Keane’s work could well be revolutionary, and our people spent the rest of the night getting a handle on her. We really dropped the ball on this woman. I dropped the ball,” she amended emphatically, and Reed was impressed with her instinct to take personal responsibility.

  “How could you have known?” he said. “Sounds like she came entirely out of left field.”

  Hubbard sighed. “Not as much as you might think. Which brings me back to her background. She was a physics savant before she was old enough to ride a bike. Unlimited promise. About to get her Ph.D. in quantum physics from MIT when she was caught stealing work from her professor and kicked out. She claimed he had stolen the work from her, but the evidence against her was overwhelming.”

  “But now we know she was framed,” said Reed.

  “Very good, Commander. We can’t know that for certain, but the fact she produced this kind of groundbreaking work at the University of South Dakota, good old USD, without anyone at MIT to steal from, suggests this is the case. After she left MIT she basically had a nervous breakdown. Fell off the edge of the world. Lived on the streets. It’s a wonder she survived.”

  “How did she turn things around?”

  “Sheer force of will. Got clean, and formed a plan. She grew up in South Dakota, so she returned there and applied to USD’s physics grad program. She was interviewed by several professors, who realized that her quantum physics IQ was off the charts. Even after coming off a multi-year bender that was bound to have destroyed countless brain cells. She normally would have been a superstar at a prestigious university or high-tech company, but she was too tainted for anyone to touch.”

  “But USD was willing to take a gamble where others wouldn’t. Because if she panned out, this was their only chance, ever, to get someone of her caliber.”

  Hubbard nodded, looking as if she was favorably impressed with her new recruit. “Exactly right, Commander. And Dr. Keane was as dazzling as they had hoped. She finished her Ph.D. from scratch in less than a year, and then stayed on as a post-doc. She was promoted to associate professor just a few months ago, less than two years after enrolling. Her rise was meteoric.”

  “But you and the world had lost track of her during her skid row days,” said Reed.

  Hubbard nodded miserably. “Which is understandable,” she said. “But we failed to reacquire her when we should have.”

  “Was USD off your radar?”

  “Not entirely. We focus the lion’s share of our attention on the most prestigious companies and universities, but we do also keep one eye trained on universities like USD. But only on their scientific stars. And Allie Keane was only a newly minted associate professor. So, like you said, she might as well have been bagging groceries. Still, we missed a critical data point. Apparently, her new Ph.D. thesis was pretty groundbreaking also, but so deeply mathematical and abstract we missed its significance. The problem is, I’d be shocked if it didn’t attract the notice of a few of our global competitors, who’ve probably been keeping track of her ever since.”

  Reed nodded slowly, taking it all in. “It’s surprising to me that she’s come up with such major advances at a place like USD,” he said. “Regardless of how brilliant she is. I mean, she’s had no camaraderie with the top minds in the field. I was always under the impression that geniuses collected at prestigious institutions so they could interact with other geniuses. To stimulate their thinking and spur them on to greatness. Since she’s in a genius vacuum, you’d have to think it unlikely she’d make this kind of breakthrough.”

  Hubbard paused in thought. After several long seconds she winced noticeably, as if something wholly unpleasant had popped into her mind. “That’s true, Commander Reed. At least the vast majority of the time.”

  She blew out a long breath and began to look vaguely ill. “The problem is,” she continued, “the two exceptions to this rule that spring to mind are truly legendary. Something I never really thought about until you just raised this point.”

  Hubbard’s expression soured further. “Which means overlooking Dr. Keane is even more egregious than I realized. Mingling with the greatest minds in a field can lead to breathtaking advances. Absolutely. But I just realized that to dramatically upend an entire field, take a quantum leap forward, a true genius may actually benefit from standing alone. Scientists cut off from exalted institutions are freer to think outside the box. They aren’t shackled by conventional thinking, and don’t need to fear being ridiculed by respected peers for having ideas that seem totally wild.”

  “So who are these rare exceptions?” asked Reed.

  “Only the two men responsible for the most important physics revolutions of the past three or four centuries,” she replied miserably. “Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.”

  She paused to let these names sink in. “In 1665,” she continued, “young Isaac Newton was a student at Cambridge when the Great Plague hit London, wiping out a quarter of the population in only two years. They didn’t understand infectious disease back then, but they knew quarantines worked, so all students at Cambridge were sent home.

  “Without any professors to guide him, Newton invented calculus, experimented with prisms in his bedroom, thus creating the field of optics, and discovered the laws of gravity and motion. Miracles all. Work that set the course that physics would follow for centuries. Had he stayed at Cambridge, it’s hard to imagine him coming up with any of these monumental breakthroughs.”

  “So maybe that was my problem in school,” said Reed wryly. “The presence of those damn professors trying to guide me. I had a feeling.”

  Hubbard laughed. “Fast-forward to Einstein,” she continued. “Because he was a German Jew at the wrong time and place in history, he couldn’t get a job in academia. He finally found employment as a patent clerk. A patent clerk makes an associate professor at USD look like a Nobel-prize winner from Princeton. I mean, this job was embarrassingly modest. Einstein would have been the last scientist on Earth to attract the attention of something like Tech Ops.

  “But at the age of twenty-six,” she continued, “as a leper all alone on an obscure island, Einstein published four papers that formed the basis of much of modern physics, shattering previous conceptions of space, time, mass, and energy, and making founding contributions to both pillars of modern physics, relativity and quantum physics. Again, there is zero chance he would have made these advances had he been in academia at the time.”

  “Fascinating,” said Reed. “But I was trying to cheer you up about this, not make it worse.”

  “You did something a lot better than cheering me up, Commander. You got me to expand my thinking. To realize we’ve failed to account for perhaps the most important cohort of all. A mistake I plan to correct immediately.”

  “Do you think this Allie Keane might be another Newton or Einstein?”

  “Unlikely, because, you know . . . who is? But maybe not too far off. It’s too early to tell. The work she just put out there is impressive. Truly staggering in originality. Biology-inspired qubit technology. Resulting in qubits that can operate at room temperature! What she posted online is more of an elaborate summary, but her work led to a series of testable predictions, several of wh
ich she confirmed already. Another key prediction requires an experiment too complex and expensive for her to carry out, but if this prediction is confirmed—which we’re now in the process of trying to do—there can be no doubt she’s on to something big.”

  Reed considered. Efforts to produce the ultimate quantum computer weren’t going well. There were sexy-sounding advances and milestones that made constant headlines, but the hidden truth was that humanity remained ten to twenty years away. “So if her work does pan out,” he said, “do you think we can get to an ultimate quantum computer in less than a year?”

  “No. There’s a catch. Even assuming she’s able to properly fill in the many gaps she purposely left in the paper she posted. Some have theorized that various life-forms on Earth, including all plants, are able to harness quantum effects at room temperature, and in messy cellular environments. She’s extended this work, come up with a breathtaking theory to describe how this is possible, and claims to have identified the structure of a theoretical organic molecule with just the properties we need. She used a sophisticated computer program of her own design to derive the precise composition of the complex, long-chain biomolecule needed. One able to forge a perfect pairing with inorganic components to create the ideal qubit.”

  “And has she disclosed the molecular formula for this . . . perfect quantum biomolecule?”

  “Fortunately not,” said Hubbard. “But she did clarify that after considerable research into state-of-the-art chemistry capabilities, she’s convinced that the needed molecule can’t be synthesized. She expects that human ingenuity will eventually discover how, but this could take five to ten years. A considerable improvement over our best estimates for the kind of quantum computer everyone is gunning for, but not immediate. Still, most elite physicists didn’t think room-temperature qubits were even possible. So the importance of this work can’t be overstated.”

  “How is it that there’s an organic molecule chemists can’t synthesize?” asked Reed. “Haven’t scientists constructed strands of DNA tens of thousands of nucleotides long?”

  Hubbard nodded. “They have. But DNA consists of common units that just get repeated over and over. Not so with this one. And there are endless examples of compounds that nature can make—meaning bacteria and higher life—that humans can’t.”

  She tilted her head in thought. “Still, even if we can’t now, there is no doubt we’ll be able to eventually. Many decades ago a highly effective anti-cancer drug named Taxol was discovered. Unfortunately, it could only be obtained from the bark of the Pacific Yew tree. And harvesting it killed the tree. But after more than twenty years of effort, and hundreds of millions of dollars invested, chemists finally found a synthetic route that enabled the drug to be synthesized without need of the tree.”

  Reed frowned. “Yeah, but I’m guessing it would have been even more difficult if they had no idea what they were trying to synthesize.”

  “Very true, Commander. Which is where you come in. I need you to do whatever it takes to get Dr. Keane to disclose the gaps in her paper to us. And the precise structure of her golden molecule. But only to us.”

  She sighed loudly, a grim expression now replacing the smile she had worn seconds earlier. “So if you think a totalitarian global power is going to get it from her first . . .” She paused, not wanting to continue. “Well . . . you may have to do the unthinkable.”

  Reed swallowed hard. This had just become a little too real. He knew the dangers of a tyrant getting the ultimate quantum computer, and the arguments about sacrifices that might be necessary for the greater good. But he also wasn’t capable of sacrificing an innocent woman—a singular genius to boot, who had already suffered cruel blows she hadn’t deserved—no matter what the stakes. He’d rather die, himself, than have that on his conscience.

  “Understood,” he said finally, choosing this word carefully. He did understand. He just wasn’t prepared to obey.

  Reed wanted to ask more questions, but he had a lengthy briefing document in his inbox, and time was fleeting. “Can I assume we’re now monitoring Allie Keane with satellites and street cams?” he asked.

  “Yes, and you have voice authority to tie into any footage you want.”

  Reed nodded. “Where is she now?”

  “At her home. Alone. With her cell phone off. When we first began surveillance, she was out to an early breakfast. Also alone. Interestingly, she didn’t bring her phone with her.”

  “On purpose?” said Reed in disbelief.

  “Seems that way.”

  “Wow,” he said with a grin. “She’s even more extraordinary than I thought.”

  The colonel laughed, and then studied Reed for several long seconds. “It’s good that you were the operative closest to South Dakota, Commander. I think you’re just the right man for this job. Exceedingly competent. But also attractive and charming.”

  She allowed herself the hint of a smile. “And no, Commander, I’m not coming on to you. But we do deal with people. And while we don’t hire based on looks, being attractive tends to be a plus in human interactions. You also have that SEAL Team Six self-confidence and aura that I should think will give you an added dimension of charisma. So please consider using charm as a weapon before you consider using any of the goodies we’ll have loaded inside your van.”

  “I appreciate the tip,” said Reed with a wry smile. “When I was with the SEALs, breaching terrorist strongholds and the like, my commanding officer never once suggested that I use charm as a weapon.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said the colonel in amusement. “But if you were breaching a stronghold held by a twenty-eight-year-old scientist named Allie Keane, I suspect he might have.”

  5

  Dr. Allison Keane walked to her bedroom to retrieve her phone in a trance. If what her neighbor reported was true, that someone wealthy and connected was so eager to offer her a position that he couldn’t wait even a few hours to get in touch with her, this was an amazing development. But she was no longer a trusting soul. Abraham Sena had robbed her of her work, yes, but also of her innocence.

  Because monsters under the bed did exist, after all. Psychopaths like Sena.

  After she had come out of her downward spiral, she had studied up on this condition, and was amazed by what she found. Fully one percent of the population fell into this category, and many were brilliant and high functioning, becoming extraordinarily successful scientists, politicians, and CEOs, mostly because they were utterly ruthless and predatory, had no conscience, and didn’t feel guilt or shame.

  Psychopaths were found in all walks of life, and if you were unlucky enough to cross one’s path, and to possess something he or she prized, you were well and truly screwed. They were raging, unfeeling hurricanes who inevitably left a path of human destruction and ruined lives in their wakes.

  Even though Allie hadn’t been broken beyond repair, trust had been a lasting casualty. She lifted her phone anxiously, as if half expecting it to transform into a venomous snake.

  How could her work be gaining a foothold so quickly? She hadn’t expected for this to happen for many months or years—and maybe never.

  The phone glowed to life in her hand and indicated she had missed thirty-two calls, many of them repeats from the same numbers, and had received eight voice messages. Her eyes widened in dismay. She rarely got more than a few calls a week, and most of these were from solicitors.

  She jumped as the phone rang, just a moment after it had powered up. She glanced at the screen, which indicated that the caller was unknown.

  “Hello?” said Allie tentatively.

  “Dr. Keane!” replied a deep male voice at the other end. “It’s great to talk to you at last. Your neighbor just confirmed that she had passed along my request, so I expected you to turn on your phone.”

  “So you’re John?”

  “Yes, John Conway. I’m the CEO of a company named Eureka Technologies. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”

  “I’m afraid not.�
�

  “No matter. As I’m sure your neighbor told you, we’ve read your recent post, and we’re very excited about your work. We’d like to take a license to it, and hire you on to help turn your theory into reality.”

  “I’m flattered,” said Allie, not sure what else to say.

  “Good,” said Conway. “Get ready to be even more flattered. We’d like you to lead a team. One loaded with the best talent and equipment money can buy. And we’re willing to offer you ten million dollars for the license, and two million a year for your services.”

  Allie couldn’t help but cough out loud, as cliché as that seemed. She steadied herself against her dresser as the room seemed to spin around her. Several responses flashed through her mind. “That’s very generous,” was one, and “What aspect of my work are you most excited about?” was another.

  “What’s the catch?” she heard herself say out loud instead.

  “Only one,” said Conway smoothly, ignoring her cynical tone. “The offer is time sensitive. I have a driver on his way to you now. He should arrive any minute. If you accept my offer, he’ll take you to the airport and our private jet. We’ll fly you to our headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, so we can meet and I can give you a tour. After that we’d ask you to review and sign a contract. As a show of good faith, even before you leave, I can have two million wired into your account. This will be yours to keep, even if you back out.” He paused. “But after our meeting and tour, I really don’t see that happening.”

  Allie struggled to digest what she was hearing. Could any of this be real? “Let me guess,” she said finally, “you don’t need my routing numbers to deposit the two million, do you?”

  “Not so much,” replied Conway with amusement in his tone. “But rest assured, we can’t pull it back out once it’s in.”

  “What am I missing . . . John?” she said. “I believe my theory is groundbreaking, but what you’ve seen is incomplete. I have the key missing pieces in my head. But even if I had published a complete version, it’s not fully verified. I might have gotten something wrong. It’s true that my initial predictions seem to have panned out, but there’s one crucial experiment that needs to be done. If my theory accurately predicts the outcome, that would be a different story. Until then, my ideas could end up being worthless.”