by Brian Nelson
Chapter Six
April 19, 2025
Palo Alto, CA
Eucalyptus trees crowded the low-rise apartment blocks in Escondido Village, the principal housing area for graduate students at Stanford University. In a tiny apartment, a young man lay asleep on a mattress on the floor. He was tall and lean with thick black hair and a handsome, but boyish, face. He was naked except for a black polyurethane brace on one knee.
The only light in the blacked-out room came from an oversize computer monitor that was quietly flipping through a series of images. Eric at age six with his father, dressed up for church in a blue suit and squinting in the sun; Eric with another young man and two pretty girls—tuxedos and prom dresses, all of them laughing at some forgotten play on words; Eric holding up a trophy at the State Wrestling Championship; Eric receiving his degree from MIT; and finally, an image of Bill Eastman with a superimposed caption: “When I grow up, I wanna be just like Eric Hill.”
Under the faux wood desk that held the monitor was the cpu—a plywood box with a single red switch, above which was scrawled the whopper, in permanent marker.
A phone rang. From under the covers, Eric Hill gave an involuntary kick. He moaned in protest and tried to ignore the sound, but the phone kept ringing. On the fifth ring, he opened one eye and looked at the clock on the floor: 6:17 a.m., and on a Saturday! Son of a bitch. He burrowed his head under the pillow. It didn’t help. Finally, the ringing stopped. Sleep. More sleep. But a minute later, the phone rang again. He sat up in bed, wanting to throw something.
The floor was littered with clothing, books, and trash … There, in the corner—his gray sweatpants were glowing. He snatched up the phone. Caller: Chris Hatter. He knew it! Once again, the Merck recruiter had forgotten that New York and California were not in the same time zone. He silenced the phone and climbed back into bed. Sorry, Chris, like I told you, not interested. He punched the pillow a few times and tried to get cozy, but it was no good. He was up now. Thinking. He knew his own brain. Once it kicked in, it wouldn’t stop anytime soon, not with all that was going on in his life. Not interested. God, was he a fool? He was two weeks away from getting a PhD in chemical engineering from Stanford fucking University, and he wasn’t interested in the twenty-one job offers he had. Twenty-one. They had started coming during his very first semester of grad school. Six figures, corporate car, eight weeks’ vacation, profit sharing, write your own ticket. How many times had he heard that? They all must have said it. Most of his friends were gone now. Few had bothered to graduate. Nanotech was just too hot. They’d gone pro, hit the majors. They called to say how great it was, that he was an idiot for staying. Who cares if the suffix after your name is only MS? The offer from Merck—that was the sweetest. He could pay off his student loans in six months.
Not interested. But he was interested. He was obsessed—by one job, which may or may not even exist. He was obsessed with finding Bill Eastman.
For the past six weeks, many of the greatest minds in nanotech, artificial intelligence, and genetics had been disappearing. Two of his Stanford professors and one from MIT had suddenly taken extended sabbaticals and moved away. He didn’t know precisely where they had gone or what they were doing—only that the disappearances had come shortly after a rumor began that Eastman was going to lead a big project for the government. Then he too, had suddenly dropped out of sight.
It had to be self-replication, he thought. The government had finally realized what was at stake. And the man they had chosen was Eastman.
He lay on his side, his mind turning over the problem. How to find Bill Eastman?
His phone rang again. This time, he sat up with a start. He could have sworn he’d silenced it. He decided to ignore it, but then he noticed that the call had a different ring, the way it sometimes did when he got a call from overseas. His curiosity was piqued. “Listen in,” he said, and the phone chirped its compliance. Now he could hear the message as the person was leaving it, and if he wished, he could still answer it.
“Hi, you have reached Eric Hill, I can’t—” his greeting began.
Then he heard a man’s voice: “Hello, my name is Jack Behrmann—”
Eric scrambled to his feet, stumbled, fell over, recovered, and grabbed for the phone. “Dr. Behrmann?”
Jack Behrmann. A quarter of Eric’s bookshelf held volumes either by or about this man. The first scientist to manipulate a catenane through chemical self-assembly. MacArthur Foundation. National Medal of Science. Possibly the most brilliant nanotechnologist in the world. But more than brilliant—he was Bill Eastman’s best friend. Wherever Behrmann was, Eastman had to be close by. “Hello, Eric, I hope I’m not calling too early.”
“No, sir. I’ve been up for a while now. Getting some work done.”
“Very good. I’m calling to talk to you about something rather important. Do you have a secure video line?”
“Yes, just a minute.” He was trying to stay cool, but his heart was racing. How many times had he dreamed of this? It almost didn’t seem real, and he feared that at any moment one of his friends’ voices would break into the line and reveal that it was all a prank. He fumbled about, scavenging for a presentable shirt, then whacked his shin on the desk so hard it sounded like a base hit. Grimacing and fighting back a string of expletives, he managed to pull a Star Wars T-shirt over his head and sit down at his desk, the better to conceal the fact that he hadn’t put on his underwear. “Connecting now,” he said. He set the phone by his desk. It immediately interfaced with the computer.
A moment later, the image of a man appeared on the monitor. It was Behrmann, all right. There was the thick beard, the soft eyes, the bald head. Although he could only see Behrmann’s head and shoulders, he was reminded that this was a very big man. You could hear it in his voice—a deep, comforting sound.
Behrmann was sitting in front of a green screen. The newer video-conferencing software had selectable backgrounds, in case you didn’t want the other person to see your real background. Instead, you could pick the location you wanted to “call” from: your office, your house, Cancún.
Behrmann was studying something on his desk, and Eric realized that it was his own picture. Behrmann was confirming his identity. Finally, he looked up. “Let’s get down to business, shall we? I saw the paper you submitted to Nature. I liked it, and I may have an opportunity for you.”
Eric tried to hide his shock. He had submitted the paper hoping that its publication would get Eastman’s attention. He never imagined that could happen before it was even published.
“However,” Behrmann continued, “I need to ask you a few questions. I’ve had a chance to talk to Otto, Kathy, and other people who know your work. They have nothing but good things to say, but I … well, I need to be absolutely sure.”
Eric nodded ever so slightly, and his eyes narrowed in concentration. Behrmann was about to put him through his paces. But he was ready for it. He had expected this—dreamed of it, in fact. He was going to rock Behrmann’s world. “Shoot,” he said.
Behrmann picked up an iSheet and set his glasses on the end of his nose. “First question …”
Eric breezed through the first set of questions. Phase equilibria, Brownian motion, sliding friction—things any decent grad student in chemical engineering would know. With each right answer, his confidence grew. After Behrmann had quizzed him for almost an hour, he paused, and Eric figured it was in the bag.
But Behrmann was just warming up. It was going to be a game to see if the great Jack Behrmann could stump him.
They moved into mathematics and physics—the real core of advanced nanotechnology. He asked about quantum entanglement and Bohr orbits, then about Maxwell’s equations and the Klein-Gordon equation. Eric’s answers started coming slower, and he started to worry. Any minute, Behrmann was sure to nail him. Eric had been lucky on the last two questions. He had seen Maxwell’s equations by chance
just a few weeks ago, and the Klein-Gordon equation was something his father had taught him in high school.
Then came the moment that made Eric’s heart skip.
“Why don’t you write out a set of six possible paths for a particle using Feynman-Dirac propagators.”
Eric felt suddenly queasy. The Feynman-Dirac propagators were some of the toughest equations in quantum mechanics. They were path-integral formulas that charted possible trajectories to compute quantum amplitude—complicated extensions of the famous Schrödinger equation. And Behrmann wanted not one, but six of them. It was a task that could easily fill a chalkboard and, these days, was always executed by a computer. Eric hadn’t written out an equation of that size in years.
“I’ll give you twenty minutes,” Behrmann said, looking down at his watch.
Eric felt the inside of his skull heat up. It was a sickening feeling that threatened his concentration. Twenty minutes! He dashed for his backpack, not caring whether Behrmann saw his bare ass, retrieved an iSheet, and began writing furiously, his fingers suddenly sweaty, slipping on the stylus.
As he filled each page, he sent it to Behrmann with a swipe of his hand. Behrmann studied the printouts meticulously, scribbling on them and occasionally asking questions to prove to himself that Eric really understood the equations and had not simply memorized them. “Why did you compensate for the relativistic arc length?”
“Because you are dealing with imaginary time—that’s why you need the heuristic.”
A nod.
By the time he reached the eighteen-minute mark, his fingers were so cramped he was shaking. He had one more full equation to go. He began writing faster than ever, his mind a focused tunnel of effort. When he next glanced at his watch, he had forty-five seconds to go. He might just make it. With a flurry of effort, he finished the last equation and swiped it over to Behrmann.
Now he waited, watching as Behrmann reviewed the equations, scrutinizing, jotting notes on each page, like a professor grading exams, occasionally grunting or nodding or squinting at his handwriting.
Eric waited, flushed with nervousness, and felt tempted to make excuses for what he was sure was a poor performance. He glanced at the clock. He couldn’t believe it. They had been talking for more than three hours.
At last, Behrmann pulled off his glasses and looked up, but Eric could not read his expression. “Believe it or not, you are the first person to actually finish the technical part of the interview. In fact, the last person started crying when I got to Klein-Gordon.” A warm smile grew across Behrmann’s bearded face. “You missed a few, but they were understandable mistakes. So, to put it bluntly, I’d like you to join my team. Interested?”
Eric let out a long exhalation, a roguish grin broadening across his face. “Yes, sir, I am.” He couldn’t believe it. He’d done it!
“There is one more thing,” Behrmann said, “and I want you to think very carefully about what I’m going to say. If you do this, if you agree to come work with us, then you have to give me everything you have. We are taking only those who are willing to give every ounce of themselves to this project. You will live on-site, and you will be expected to work harder and smarter than you have ever worked before. Six- and seven-day weeks, up to sixteen hours a day. In short, only if you can make this your life’s work do we want you here. Are you willing to do that?”
Eric didn’t honestly know whether he could, but this was what he had wanted ever since his sophomore year at MIT. He looked around the cluttered apartment and thought of the solitary life he had led to get him to this place.
He said what he had to say, the only thing there was to say.
Chapter Seven
February 2, 2025
Nyingchi Prefecture, Tibetan Autonomous Region
Sonam shifted anxiously beside the old truck driver.
“Hurry up,” the man said, looking around nervously. They were standing on the back of a logging truck, bracing against the cold, their breath pouring out of their mouths like smoke. Under their feet were snow-covered tree trunks—massive pines and hemlocks, six feet thick at the base—so long they jutted out from the end of the flatbed.
“Go on, get in!” the man said.
Sonam hesitated. At his feet was a hole in one of the pine trees, the opening scarcely bigger than a dinner plate. Just looking at it made him claustrophobic.
“I won’t fit,” he said.
“Yes, you will,” the driver said, placing a hand on his shoulder and urging him down. “Now, please hurry. If this truck isn’t back in the convoy in five minutes, the political officer is going to suspect something, and then we’ll both rot in Drapchi prison.”
Sonam looked at the man’s weathered face, the skin almost black from a life under the high mountain sun—leathery, worn, and cracked. Sonam didn’t like the man’s touch, but he said nothing. He knew that the man was taking an incredible risk helping him. Whatever debt he owed Sonam’s father, it must be very great. Sonam mumbled a prayer then wriggled his way in, feetfirst. As emaciated as he was from prison, he still had to squeeze his elbows together to get his shoulders through. He fit, but just barely. There was no way to extend his legs, and it was a struggle to move his arms at all. It was also cold and damp inside. The only thing that didn’t completely repulse him was the soothing smell of pine.
The driver handed him a thermos, a small bag of food, a fur blanket, and a funny-looking medical bag. “My wife stole this from the hospital for you.” Sonam eyed the bag and its little hose curiously.
Reading his expression, the driver said, “Put the end of the tube over your dick and piss in the bag.” Sonam flushed with embarrassment.
“Now, remember, you must stay inside the whole time. The convoy will stay close together, and if your head pops up out of this hole, the driver behind me will see you.”
Sonam nodded. He lay back, pulled his hands to his chest, and watched as the lid descended toward his face. He took a big gulp of air, like a man about to be submerged in water, and the man fitted the lid into place, a mere inch from his nose. Darkness. He thought he could do this, but something inside him rebelled. No! It was too much like death, like bardo. He shoved the lid open, gasping, and started crawling out.
In a second, the driver was beside him, but now his tone was not so harsh. “Breathe, Sonam. That’s it. No, don’t get out. Wait a minute … just wait. You can do this.”
“No, I can’t!” He sat on the lip of the opening, legs still inside.
“I know you can. Breathe. I know it seems bad, but I’ve taken many people off the plateau this way. If they can do it, so can you.”
Sonam shook his head. No. He looked at the man’s face. It had struck him as an ugly face at first. But now he saw tranquility in the eyes, and he suddenly realized that this haggard old man was a strong Buddhist. He would have to be to risk his life over and over again for others. Sonam breathed. Waited a moment. Breathed again. His heart began to slow. He exhaled, looked at the man, and nodded. “Okay, let’s try again.”
“That’s it,” he said. “Use your training.”
Again the lid was lowered. Darkness. He concentrated on his breathing and began to recite his mantras. Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ … He thought of bardo, of death, the forty-nine days between one life and the next. If a mind was untrained and unprepared for bardo, then it became hell—forty-nine days of nightmarish torment that culminated in a bad rebirth. But if one could find serenity and control one’s fears, then a teacher would appear—a lama who could guide the soul. Then bardo became a sublime space of transcendence, leading to a good rebirth.
Sonam tried to remember the meditation techniques his father and the tutors had taught him. He reminded himself that this was not as bad as death, not even as bad as prison.
Outside, he heard the driver shoveling snow on top of the log, followed by the rustling sound of a hemlock bough being brush
ed over the snow to conceal their footprints. A few minutes later, the diesel engine clattered to life and the truck began to move. That was good. It meant that every minute he endured brought him that much closer to getting out. Between his breathing, the meditation, and the movement of the truck, he remained calm. As his eyes adjusted, he realized it was not completely dark. There was a circle of pink around the rim of the lid. It had been made to allow a little air in so that he did not suffocate. He thought of the others who had made this journey before him, and he began to believe he could do it after all.
He thought back to last night, parting with his father. For days, they had been fighting bitterly over his leaving. Last night had been no different.
“I don’t want to argue anymore,” his father had said. “You must go. Can’t you see what will happen? You are stubborn and proud, and a subjugated people cannot be stubborn and proud. You will continue to fight, and soon enough they will kill you.”
“I’m at peace with that path,” Sonam said. “In the next life, I will be stronger and I will fight them again. I will never stop. I will return again and again.”
“Fighting the Chinese is not the way to nirvana.”
“And rotting here while they systematically destroy us—that is? While they humiliate us and brainwash us and steal everything we have created—that’s the way to nirvana?”
But the old man was unmoved. “You are my son, and I forbid you to forfeit your life.”
Sonam turned his head in disgust. He was arguing merely to argue. He knew that. He would not disobey his father. Yet arguing was his way of telling him he didn’t want to go, that he was scared. Couldn’t his father see that?
Yéshé went to his son and stood very close to him. “Stand up,” the old man said.
Sonam stood. A long moment passed, and he shifted uncomfortably, half expecting his father to strike him.