Fate (Wilton's Gold #3)

by Craig W. Turner

  “You want honesty? I can’t wait to get the hell out of here.”

  “Ah, you don’t have that much more to go. You’re halfway there.” Dexter stood again and walked toward the door. “There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said. “The person who designed the PCS system.”

  A shadow appeared in the doorway, followed by a slender brunette with long hair down her back and dressed in a well-fitted navy skirt suit. It was Abby!

  “Oh my God,” Jeff said, looking up at Dexter. “Can I get up?” Dexter laughed, so Jeff got up and hugged her.

  Abby Smith was the genius mathematician Jeff had recruited to help him devise the coordinate system which had enabled precise time travel in the first place some five years before. She’d been the first person he’d taken on a time travel mission besides himself – she’d asked to go to Woodstock, where they’d had a wonderful time blending in with the masses. Again, it had really only been a week or so since he’d seen her, but the crazy mess that had been his life as of late made it seem like ages.

  “I heard you were back,” she said once they unlocked their embrace. “It’s good to see you.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have your tablet,” he said. Strangely, it occurred to him just at that moment that he’d never returned her tablet with the time travel coordinates processor on it, and remembered that Fisher had taken it from him when he’d arrived from Russia. The bastard had never given it back.

  She smiled. “As you can imagine, it’s okay,” she said. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the time devices now, but the program is built right in. There’s no more need to transpose the numbers.”

  “Thank goodness,” he said. “That was next on my list, you know.”

  “I know it was. You did it.”

  “I- oh.” He nodded and smiled. The other Jeff. So she was aware.

  He looked her up and down. She looked great. Memories of recruiting her to be on his team flooded back to him, and for a moment he felt a feeling of security in finding something from his old life to grasp onto. “So, what’s going on with you? Tell me everything.”

  Dexter jumped in. “Well, there’s not time right now. We can do that later. I actually asked Abby to come in to explain to you a little about the analysis we’ll be doing. Why you’re being asked these questions. What we’re going to do with the information.”

  Jeff nodded. “Fair enough. Is this something you’d do for every participant in the program?”

  “If they ask.”

  “Okay,” he said, then looked at Abby. “Do you want to start or can I ask a question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He leaned on the desk. “I get most of why you’re asking what you’re asking, but why the questions about movies, hobbies, all of that? Seems superfluous.”

  “Well, a lot of it is,” she said, “depending on where you’re traveling.” She paused for a minute, glancing at her watch. “But the hobbies are particularly important in understanding connections beyond the familial links. We’re going to wave a red flag if the person’s foremost pastime is attending Civil War reenactments and their choice of destination is the Battle of Antietam.”

  “I would think a military battle would be off-limits altogether,” Jeff said. “Seems a little too dangerous.”

  “It depends on the specifics,” Dexter said.

  “Yeah, and the person’s checkbook,” Jeff said. He waited for either of them to bite on the comment, which they didn’t, so he gave in. “Do people still even use checks?”

  “Not really,” Dexter said.

  “Anyway,” Abby said, bringing the conversation back, “each of the categories of questions you’ve answered and will answer have a specific point they’re trying to get to. The genealogical data is the easiest extrapolation, of course. Business contacts and professional relationships are critical, but many of the travelers are going further back in time than their relationships extend.”

  “How does that affect the calculations?”

  Abby smiled. “I know you, and I know your next question is about Benjamin Kane, so I’ll save you having to ask. In truth, the further a person goes back in time, the less relevant the business components are. Sure, there will be cases like Kane’s with a history of family business, but realistically, there just isn’t a big pool of people who can trace their business dealings back any great length of time. Industry really only sprouted in the United States 150 or 160 years ago, and only the most resilient of companies have any ancestry from then.”

  “So did the system do its job in Kane’s situation?”

  “Well, there’s no way of knowing,” she said. “Because in this reality, there is no Kane. Or, rather, Kane didn’t come to the USTP. But let’s say that in theory he did, using Dexter’s retelling of the story as a guide. The probability that Kane could predict the exact moment that George Mellen would be buying his newspaper was infinitesimal. Like any other technological pursuit in history, if someone wants to find a way to beat it, they’ll be able to find a way. Short of telling Kane that he couldn’t take the mission, a position we probably didn’t have the data to support, there would be no precautions we would take to anticipate Kane’s actions.”

  Dexter jumped in. “I don’t know if even I agree completely with that,” he said.

  “Well, from the mathematical perspective, I’m betting Kane was as safe a candidate as any we’ve had.” Her insinuation that the psych exam in Dexter’s other reality might not have been as effective as it could have been was not lost on Jeff.

  “Alright, I don’t want to spend my break fighting that battle,” Jeff said. “So, the further back you go, the less of a risk you are?”

  “Not exactly,” Abby said, straightening her posture by standing at ease. She always had been all business. “See, while business relationships become less important when you go further back in time, familial relationships begin to carry a higher risk.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Simply stated, because there would be more family lines that can be impacted. If you go back to World War II, you run the risk of running into, say, your grandfather and grandmother. If you go back to World War I, you run a greater risk because you’ll have the chance of running into two great grandfathers and two great grandmothers. I’m giving you the simplest examples, of course, but they grow exponentially. Twenty to twenty-five years before that, you run the risk of running into eight direct ancestors. That’s why the genealogical link is the most critical to the algorithms. The two greatest risks are that someone will try to contact an ancestor to benefit the future of the family line or try to find a competitor to alter their course to their own benefit. That one, as we saw, is a little tougher to predict and track.”

  “I guess so,” Jeff said slowly. “So after I take these tests, the machine’s going to spit out a score for me – what did you call it?”

  “PCS – a potential conflict score.”

  “Yes, PCS. So I get one of these scores, and then what? Based on that score I can either go on the trip or not?”

  “Well, that combined with the results of Dr. Graham’s psychological exam and your physical tests,” Abby said.

  “But what if my score is bad? They told me nobody’s been refused entry to the program. What’s the worst score anyone has gotten?”

  Dexter and Abby looked at each other. “The gentleman who wanted to go on a steamboat on the Mississippi in the late 1800s had a conflict score of 24%,” Dexter said. “If I remember correctly.”

  “What drove that?”

  “Ancestors living in the area,” Abby said.

  “And no problems?”

  Dexter shook his head. “Nope. In and out. One of my favorite trips, actually.”

  “We’ve got to get you back to work,” Abby said. “We can explain more later if necessary while the results are being compiled.” She left the room.

  Jeff nodded and sat down at the terminal again.

  “Anything to drink? Snack?” Dexter asked.
<
br />   He shook his head no, then Dexter left, closing the heavy door behind him. Jeff slipped his headphones on to the sounds of Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” which he found ironically appropriate for the situation. He hummed along as the screen illuminated again with the next category: HISTORY.

  Dexter’s voice was suddenly in his ear. “Jeff, you there?”

  He gave the mirror a thumbs-up.

  “Great. For the next category, you’re going to be asked some general questions about the era you’ll be visiting to test your knowledge. As you can imagine, we need to make sure that the participant isn’t too knowledgeable about the intricacies of the destination because it increases the risk. Enjoy.”

  The screen flipped, and Jeff was faced with his first question: “On whose property was the first gold found that kicked off the California Gold Rush?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Dexter led Jeff down a long corridor with glass on either side. They were three floors beneath the atrium of the USTP, at server level. On their left through the glass were rows of cubicles filled with bureaucrats pecking away at their stations. He’d never paid much attention to what these people did on a daily basis – he’d only thought that there were simply way too many of them for what the program needed. He couldn’t imagine that what the USTP did on a daily basis created that much paper to push, but he’d also been working in and around government enough in his life to know that elected officials needed patronage jobs to fill. Here was a room full of them. He often wondered if they had any idea what actually was going on a few floors above their cubicles.

  On their right was something much more impressive – the USTP server. Row after row of high-powered computer systems indefatigably churning billions of bits of information. He’d been told that it was the second most powerful government server in the nation – which probably meant the world – lagging behind only those deep beneath the Pentagon. Given what they were attempting to accomplish, that seemed believable. While his involvement with the computer system was relegated to analysis of participants in the program, he knew there were much bigger things happening.

  Because of the impressiveness of the system, the USTP folks had installed a viewing area for financiers and other folks – such as engineers and academics – looking to take on projects of vast magnitude. It was into this viewing area that Dexter led Jeff, standing at the top of a short flight of stairs which enabled onlookers to see the entire system.

  From above, an arced glass allowed for a view of at least sixty rows of servers, each about as long as a grocery store aisle. The glass was soundproof, which was fortunate, as Dexter had been told the noise inside the server room was intolerable. Even as they looked, Dexter could see several uniformed operators tending to various sections of the server, all equipped with noise reduction headphones. Dexter had been on the server floor once, but before it was operational, so he hadn’t experienced the murmur of the drives. He smiled thinking about it, because he’d been standing next to Dr. Jeff Jacobs as they’d done the walk-through.

  He looked at this Jeff, who was staring at the system in awe. He had no way of knowing his friend’s expertise in computer hardware, but found it hard to believe there was anyone who wouldn’t have their breath taken away by the sight before them.

  “How much did this cost?” Jeff finally asked, still gaping from left to right.

  “The building or the system?”

  “The system.”

  “It was $750 million.”

  “Sheesh,” he said. “Could’ve done a lot of good with that much money.”

  “They believe they have.”

  “Tell me about what I’m seeing.”

  Dexter took a breath. “Well, I’m not the expert, so you’re going to get the sales brochure version. There are sixty-three rows, each holding approximately 1,600 servers. Over three trillion pieces of data are processed here every twenty-four hours. The servers interact through an algorithm that was actually developed by Dr. Bremner, who before he became head of the Time Program was considered one of the top mathematicians on the planet, and had started what became the world’s largest data security company. Every server in this room is running at the same exact speed – it’s an incredibly fast speed, but they’re all aligned so that each one is reading from all of the others at any given moment.”

  “What’s the significance of that?”

  “Well, remember what I told you about the PCS system,” he said, still looking out at the server room. “It’s all about relationships. Think of it like your family. So you have two cousins that are not cousins of each other – maybe one on your mother’s side, one on your father’s. But they have a relationship because of you. So if we’re evaluating each of their existing relationships, it’s an important link. Now each of them have cousins that may have the same connection. Those relationships all become a part of the analysis. That’s just one quick example. You can see how the calculations can multiply quickly.”

  “Yes, I know what you’re saying, but-”

  “Because of the alignment of the servers, it enables us to pull any possible relationships at any given time. The one between you and your cousin, between you and his cousin, or you and his cousin’s cousin. You and I are sitting here going on and on in order to figure this out in only a hypothetical view. The server doesn’t need to do that.”

  “So it happens instantaneously?”

  Dexter laughed. “No – it’s still trillions upon trillions of pieces of data. It takes some time.”

  “Is the system running my data now?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t believe so. Not yet.”

  “So what’s it doing?”

  “When the system’s not doing a specific task, it’s analyzing relationships to prepare itself for the next task. It’s a learning computer, so when it discovers a relationship, it doesn’t forget it.”

  Now Jeff looked at him. “So it’s just assessing random relationships? Every day, this is what it does?”

  “You’re getting a little over my head,” Dexter said, holding up his hands. “But my understanding is yes, that’s what it does.” Jeff looked at the floor for a moment before looking back at him, then returned his gaze to the servers. He had something on his mind. “Something wrong?”

  He shook his head. “No. This is just pretty incredible. I’m curious what relationships it’s finding when it’s not doing a specific task.”

  “You’d have to ask Bremner that. Or Abby. She may know.”

  “I may do that. Is there a control room?”

  Dexter nodded. “Yep. The next stop on our tour.”

  He ushered Jeff away from the window and back down the stairs. They turned right and continued down the glass hallway until they reached a set of double doors. Dexter slid the security badge hanging on his belt through the reader and then placed his thumb on the screen next to the door. The lock clicked.

  “Did I have one of those?” Jeff asked.

  “You did, yes.”

  The followed a dark brown hallway along the width of the server room, and then ascended two flights of stairs that put them on the other side. Dexter again badged and thumbed through another security lock, which let them into a room filled with monitors containing read-outs of various colors, itemized lists of data and, finally, tracking frequency graphs. The room was dark, almost like a television production studio, and was staffed by four people, one of them Abby and one of them Dr. Bremner, who turned in his swivel chair to greet them.

  Just as Bremner extended his hand to Jeff, Dexter winced. “Ah, I forgot to tell you Dr. Bremner’s favorite talking point about the servers. Fifty percent of the energy powering the servers derives from the man-made waterfall behind the building, which you probably haven’t had time to see yet. It’s actually quite beautiful.”

  Bremner shook his head as he shook Jeff’s hand. “Everyone seems to forget that little ditty,” he said. “This system, as enormous as it is, uses less base load energy th
an private sector servers a tenth of its size.”

  “I’m not an energy guy,” Jeff said, “but that sounds impressive.”

  Bremner laughed. “Come and let me show you around.” He led them to the main windows of the room, where they looked down on an alternative view of the server room floor. They could see the viewing alcove where they’d been standing minutes before. “This is where the magic happens,” he said. “When you were working in your lab in New Jersey, did you envision anything this grand?”

  “Honestly, no,” Jeff said. His tone was sallow – in his mind, Dexter finished his thought for him: “I hoped it would never be like this.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t be here without your foresight,” Bremner said, giving him a car salesman slap on the back. “This is my vision that I built off of your and Dr. Murphy’s and Abby’s original vision for safe time travel. A supercomputer working to analyze every possible relationship in history going back hundreds of years. Now, I’m sure you’re asking why this is necessary – to be honest, the other version of you asked the same question. I can assure you, there’s much more important work being done here than sending people back in time for their jollies.”

  “I assumed that was the case,” Jeff said.

  Dexter had heard the speech before, but in truth he always had the same questions Jeff was asking – or that Bremner was answering without Jeff actually asking them. The research being done in this facility was incomparable, but to what end? It was well understood that everyone in the civilized world was now linked through data – every time anyone shopped, posted a “selfie,” or got on a plane, their behaviors were being collected and analyzed, and it was accepted. But what he understood about what Bremner’s machine was able to do took that concept to a whole new level. People’s relationships were now being weighed irrespective of their consent and using criteria that made little sense outside of the scope of the Time Program. Which was why he hadn’t been able to explain it very well to Jeff when he’d started to ask.