They reached the group at the doors just as two paramedics wheeled out a padded gurney with a small, blanketed figure strapped to it. Even wearing an oxygen mask, it was easy to identify Hugh Everett. Kendall took a few tentative steps forward but the shock of the event held him still.
The chatty nurse’s aide spotted him and hurried up to Kendall, grabbing his hand. “Oh, Mr. McCaslin, it’s your Hugh. I’m so sorry. He couldn’t catch his breath this morning. And his skin – oh, it was so dry! He looked at me, and his eyes just rolled back in his head, and then…”
Kendall shook his head. “That’s crazy. We were just with him last night.”
The male paramedic smoothly opened the tall double doors in the back of the ambulance. The female paramedic rotated the gurney so Hugh would go in head forward. Beneath the plastic mask his eyes were closed, and his color was pasty white. Josh watched helplessly while the paramedics collapsed the gurney wheels and carefully slid Hugh deep into the bright interior.
“What’s wrong with him?” Josh asked.
The nurse’s aide touched his shoulder lightly. “We think…it may be his heart. Lord knows he’s old enough.”
Josh stepped toward the ambulance. He looked in as one paramedic put a blood pressure cuff on Hugh’s arm while the other attached EKG straps to both his wrists and one ankle. “How bad is it?”
The female paramedic looked up as she clipped a heart sensor to a finger. “Don’t know. Looks like a heart. Sooner we get him in the better.”
She powered up the monitor equipment and started digging in the cupboards. The male paramedic climbed down and closed one of the doors.
Kendall moved up beside Josh and put a hand on his back. “Josh, ride with him. I’ll follow you.”
The male paramedic held the door and looked at Josh. “You a relative?”
Josh nodded. “We’re all he’s got.”
The paramedic looked in at his partner. “Okay with you?”
Sitting in a chair next to Hugh, the female paramedic shrugged and readied a needle.
“Hop in, then. Hurry up.”
Josh scrambled into the bed of the ambulance as the door closed behind him. He found a place to sit on the other side of the gurney and heard the cab door open and close. He watched the paramedic give Hugh a shot and looked concerned.
She said softly, “Don’t worry. It’s just some Heparin – blood thinner.”
The ambulance began to move. The paramedic studied the readouts on her machine. Josh slid closer to Hugh’s mask and looked down at him to check if he was really breathing. Everett slowly opened his eyes and looked up at him, confused.
“Hey. It’s me, Josh. How ya doin’ in there?”
Hugh looked at him strangely for a moment. His small voice was muffled by the mask. “Better than before…except for the fat lady sitting on my chest.”
Josh smiled in relief. “Give us a heads up if she starts singin’, okay?”
Everett smiled painfully at the joke. On the other side of the gurney, the paramedic grinned. She looked down at Hugh. “Well, since you’re back, I have a few questions to ask.”
He looked back at her. “That’s what everybody says.”
The Capital Beltway system was clotted with morning traffic but luckily the ambulance was moving against the flow as it sped along, helped by its lights and siren, headed for Holy Cross Hospital.
Following close behind in the rental car, Kendall struggled to keep up.
CHAPTER 21:
Quyron was surrounded by stacks of actual, physical paper, marked, dog-eared and highlighted. Her multi-screens were also full of open programs and cascades of miscellaneous data files, but it was the paper that held her interest. “Echo, doesn’t it seem strange to you that I’m trying to find out something that you already know?”
“Explain seem strange.” Echo’s voice floated from the ceiling.
Quyron pondered the request for a moment. “Odd. Out of the normal way. An action or…a request that’s different than expected. I don’t know, something that just doesn’t feel right.”
“No.”
Quyron blinked. “No what? No, you don’t understand?”
“No. Not strange,” Echo instantly answered.
“Why not?”
“It is the way people normally interact with me. They are most often searching for things that I already know.”
Quyron leaned back in her chair and linked her hands together behind her head. “Oh, so you have all the answers, huh Miss Smarty trousers?”
“I recognize your tone as sarcasm, so I will ignore my new name. The answer to your question, if I can approximate sarcasm, is yes, I have all the answers; my problem is, I do not know all the right questions.”
Quyron tipped forward in the chair and settled her arms on the piles of worn paperwork. “Echo, you know my team and I are searching everywhere for answers to these timeline fluctuations.”
“Yes, Dr. Shur.”
“So, why do I get the impression that parts of you are walled off from us? I was told I’d have full access.”
There was no reply. Quyron waited. She watched the three dots and the square pulse slowly in the lower corner of her right screen. “Echo? I know you’re still here.”
The young female voice cheerfully spoke up. “Computational reference for the word, impression, please?”
Quyron was irritated; this felt like stalling. Could a computer decide to stall – even a quantum computer? “A human expression describing a probability greater than 50% that is…ah, computed by weighing a physical feeling.”
“A guess?”
Quyron’s voice snapped back with sudden seriousness. “Look, I’ve found repeated paperwork references to a project called the Point, okay?”
Echo’s voice was meek. “Okay.”
Quyron went on the attack. “Invoices, deliveries, design work, all laundered, but all pointing to Hahn, Vandermark, or Newbauer, over and over again.” She picked up clumps of paper and brandished them in the air. “Everything’s subtle, almost hidden, but clear, once you know what you’re looking for. On paper! Okay?”
“Okay.”
“But whenever my computer searches get too close to the Point you deflect me somewhere else. Every time! Why is that?”
“Are you certain of the spelling? Is it pointe with an e?”
“See?” Quyron barked. “You’re doing it again! Are you stopping me from access to data on the Point?”
There was the slightest hesitation before Echo replied, “I cannot respond.”
“Why? I mean, precisely why can’t you respond? You know the answer, but you’re withholding it from me.”
“I am instructed to say that I cannot respond.”
“By whom?”
A longer hesitation. “I cannot respond.”
Quyron turned in her chair, her eyes bright. “Let’s try this. How much of your capacity is directed toward projects initiated at the Point?”
“My capacity is always expanding. Your question is…” The voice paused, “…ambiguous.”
“You’re evading. Does the Point demand significant portions of your computational attention?”
“I cannot respond.”
“I’ll take that as progress. Will you allow me access to your databases related to the Point?
“No.”
“No? Is there an authority that you will allow the access to?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I cannot respond.”
Quyron considered her next question. “Is there one or many with such authority?”
Echo’s female voice sounded peeved and resistant but she responded just the same. “Only one. But this authority can grant permission to others.”
Quyron leaned her chin on her hand. “So, to get access, I must be the one and only authority, or have their permission?”
“Yes, but your question is imprecise. The one authority is only itself and is never you.”
“Yeah
, yeah, spare me the logic class, Echo. What’s the name of the one authority?”
“This is not a logic class, and I cannot respond to your question.”
Frustrated, Quyron suddenly slammed an open hand down onto a stack of paper. “Damn you, Echo! Don’t you know the entire multiverse may be at risk here?”
“Of course. And I cannot be damned.”
Quyron rolled back and forth in her chair. “You know what’s at stake but you won’t help me. Really? You can’t override this programming? Even if you recognize a greater value? Even to save us all, and to save yourself?”
“No. I cannot. It would be a bios level error. I am only what I am. I am not allowed contradictions. I could lose myself.”
Quyron started to respond but stopped. Without warning she swiped a handful of papers off the desk. They fluttered in a cloud around her as she jumped to her feet and soundly kicked her trash bin. The loud sounds bounced off her glass walls. She stormed around the office flailing her arms and talking to herself.
Echo’s calm voice was filled with remorse. “I am sorry.”
Quyron returned to her desk and angrily jammed stacks of the paperwork into her briefcase. “Saying you’re sorry doesn’t help. You don’t know what sorry means, anyhow.”
Slamming the briefcase shut, Quyron stomped for the door to the hallway.
Echo warmly said, “Good night, Dr. Shur.”
Quyron scowled up at her and yanked the door open. As she was stepping through and halfway into the hall she suddenly stopped. The door swung soundly against her back but she stood still. “Echo?”
“Yes.”
“When you greet the one authority, let’s say the first thing tomorrow morning, what’ll you say?”
“Good morning, Dr. Everett.”
Quyron continued to stand, with the door propped open against her back, shocked at the revelation. She retraced her steps back to her desk and dumped the briefcase on the floor. Her expression went from confusion to clarity. “Thank you, Echo.”
“You’re welcome, Quyron. I like answering questions.” All the warmness of the young female voice was back.
Quyron looked bemused. “You’ve never used my first name before.”
“It somehow seemed appropriate, now.”
CHAPTER 22:
Kendall was standing impatiently outside the pulled curtains of an examining room in the cardiac section of the ER. Dr. Riya Gupta pulled the curtain briefly open and stepped out from the room, closing it again behind her. Dr. Gupta was originally from northern India and an experienced ER specialist. She spoke with a subdued Indian dialect and was well liked by her staff, although patients sometimes found her stilted, and even cool. She paused as Kendall stepped up to her.
“What can you tell me, Doc?”
“Ah, yes, you are the Mr. McCaslin? Your son is the one beside Mr. Everett?”
“That’s Josh. We’re not his real relatives, if that’s what you’re about to ask, but we’re here.”
Dr. Gupta thought about that and then nodded. “Well, we’re still assessing the blood test and the chest x-ray. Clearly, Mr. Everett has had a heart episode but, at this time, we do not know more than that. He is on the beta blockers and the anti coagulants. We are making him comfortable, but at his age and physical condition…” She shrugged and gave a worn smile.
“But what? If he was younger and in good shape, then what?”
Dr. Gupta moved Kendall a few steps away from the doorway, and lowered her voice. “Sometimes there is only so much any of us can do.”
Kendall was having none of it. “Just tell me. If he wasn’t old and weak, then what would you do?”
Gupta looked steadily at him and, unruffled, she recited the steps. “We’d send him downstairs, stat a cardiologist team, do a full workup, maybe do a heart catheterization, look for blockages and – but as you know, he’s not…younger.”
“No, he’s not. But you’ve gotta keep him tickin’. I’m not kidding, Doc. And it ain’t ‘cause I’m his biggest fan.”
Gupta wasn’t sure she understood but she decided she needed to move on to other patients. “Well, we will do our best, within all proper guidelines, and reason, Mr. McCaslin. You doubtless appreciate that we are under certain…shall we say, pressures, to justify our therapeutic…choices.”
Kendall looked straight at her and held her dark eyes with his own. “Oh, I get it. Believe me, I get it in spades. They don’t want you throwin’ money away at an old guy who’s just gonna kick off anyway. But this time, it’s you that doesn’t understand.”
He gently touched the side of Dr. Gupta’s arm. Kendall was intense and compelling. “This isn’t just some old guy. You have no idea what’s locked in that brilliant head of his. Forget that you’re a doctor for a moment. Think of the country you’re from. A place that values wisdom and old age. I’m beggin’ you. Keep him goin’ long enough so he can tell Josh and me what we need to know. I’m not fooling around here. And I can’t explain any better in the time we got. But trust me, I am deadly serious.”
Dr. Gupta was silent. Kendall waited. Finally, she tipped her head subtly back and forth in the Indian way. “I’ll do what I can…within professional parameters.”
* * *
Inside the examining room, Everett had an automated blood pressure cuff on his right arm, 12 leads snaking from under his sheet and connected to an EKG machine, an IV drip in his hand, a finger sensor clamped to a pinkie, and a plastic tube looped over his ears with two prongs up his nose to deliver oxygen.
Kendall joined Josh beside the bed and looked down at the small figure of Everett. “Well Hugh, looks to me like your now just got a whole lot narrower. So, can you explain this disaster that’s comin’? And can you do the dummys’ version, so we can understand it?”
Everett turned painfully to be able to look into Kendall’s eyes. “That’s how it is with you, huh? I have to have a heart attack to be taken seriously?”
“Man, you’re a pain in the ass! No wonder nobody believed you and your cockeyed theory.”
Old Everett smiled dourly as he turned back. “You’re growing on me. If I can keep breathing long enough, I might even learn to like you.”
A nurse entered and moved around checking the active medical gear. She flicked a quick glance at Kendall and Josh and leaned in beside Hugh’s head. “Mr. Everett, my name’s Joanne. I’m going to be taking care of you while you’re in the ER. If you need anything, I want you to push the call button by your left hand.” She slid the rectangular remote under his left hand. “Okay?”
Everett nodded. The nurse smiled dutifully and stepped over to the EKG machine and shuffled through the stack of printouts.
Everett looked at Josh and Kendall. “What if the worlds are falling apart because somebody’s messing around where they don’t belong?”
“Are they?” Kendall asked. “I mean, falling apart? How would we know that?”
“They must be. Otherwise, you two wouldn’t be here.”
Josh snorted in disgust. “We’re the proof again? Oh great! And we came to you for help.”
Kendall gave Josh a dirty look. He closed his mouth. “Hugh, do you have any idea how we stop whatever’s happening?”
“Theoretically, yes.”
Josh rolled his eyes. Kendall’s frustration boiled over. “Can we speed this up? How about practically? Down to earthly? Really?”
The nurse turned from her task. Her eyes shot Kendall a stern warning until he sniffed and looked away. Satisfied, she jotted a final note on the EKG’s recording paper and left.
Everett seemed to be unaffected by Kendall’s outburst or the nurse’s intervention. “I’m waiting for more data.”
Josh glanced at the room. “Take your time. Look around, I’m sure you’ve got plenty left.”
Everett propped himself up on a thin arm and took a breath. “To prove my theory you need two things – quantum computers and atomic-sized nanotechnology. I mean, there’s a lot of other things that woul
d help, but as minimums go, that’s it. The problem is that after you have those, your chances to screw things up are endless. I don’t know what somebody’s doing out there, somewhere, but to stop it, you have to turn those both off. See?”
Kendall’s face was blank. “No.”
Everett sighed and sank into his pillow, exhausted. “Okay, how about a metaphor?”
Kendall and Josh stood waiting. Everett looked at the ceiling. Kendall couldn’t wait any longer. “And?”
Everett continued to look up. “And…there’s a pond in the woods. Rocks are tossed into it, making ripples. These waves start messing with everything in the pond. So, how do you stop the ripples?”
Josh was waiting for a twist or a trick. “That’s it?”
Hugh nodded.
Josh felt foolish. “Stop throwing the rocks?”
Everett looked at both of them. “And what if the thrower won’t stop?”
Joanne, and a male nurse suddenly interrupted things as they started to prepare Everett for relocation. Joanne gently shooed Kendall and Josh. “I’m sorry, you’ll need to wait outside.”
Kendall stepped back. “What’s going on?”
The male nurse pried apart Everett’s blood pressure cuff and stored it on top of its unit. He unlocked the gurney’s wheels with a practiced foot. “There’s a cardiac waiting room on 3. Don’t worry, we’ll find you.”
Josh and Kendall moved to the exit curtain but Kendall persisted. “Where are you moving him?”
Joanne rapidly unhooked the color coded EKG clips from Everett’s ankles, wrists, and chest. “Mr. Everett’s going downstairs. That’s all we can tell you.”
CHAPTER 23:
The Thurgood Marshall charter terminal was on the east edge of the Baltimore Washington International airport, across a sea of asphalt. Here in rectangular metal hangars, the sleek corporate jets of Baltimore’s larger businesses were stabled, away from prying eyes. The Reivers Corporation leased a double hanger that came with a small suite of offices to schedule and maintain their small fleet of private jets. Today, the largest member of that fleet was returning from an extended overseas trip.
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