Cyrus Twelve: Leona Foxx Suspense Thriller #2

by Ted Peters

  Leona along with Tina Matsuoka watched and listened to the questioning of Valentine from behind a one-way mirror. Michael Brocker led the interrogation in a small bare room in the Mountain View Police Department building.

  Valentine was most cooperative though distraught. He described in detail his close working relationship with Kelly Compton at NASA. He praised her abilities and lauded her zeal as a scientist. Yes, he had warm feelings for his lab rat colleague. No, he and Kelly had never flirted let alone had an affair. Yes, he is happily married. No, he has never been involved in a violent crime.

  “How did your cell phone get into the suitcase with Mrs. Compton’s body?” Brocker asked the suspect.

  “I have no idea,” responded Valentine, shaking his head in dismay.

  “When did you last see your phone?”

  “On the night of the NASA and TTU reception. When I got home, I could not find it. I thought it would be in one of my pockets, but it wasn’t.”

  “What time did you get home that evening?”

  “About 10:00, if I recall correctly.”

  “Did you and your wife go home together?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “What time did you go to bed?”

  “We were in bed by 11:00 pm. We were both scheduled to work the next day.”

  “Did you remain in bed all night? Can your wife vouch for you? Your alibi here could be important.”

  “I think so.”

  “What do you mean you think so? Either you were in bed with her all night or not. So?”

  “We sleep in separate bedrooms.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, separate bedrooms. I snore. I have sleep apnea. When I retire I put on a face mask. It’s attached to an oxygen machine to insure that I don’t suffocate. The machine noisy and really disturbs her. So, we sleep apart.”

  “This means, Mr. Valentine, that you could have snuck out of the house and returned without her having known your were gone. Is this right?”

  “Well....” Valentine stumbled.

  “That’s enough,” pronounced the inspector. The two sat in their respective chairs across a small table for minutes without speaking. Both were thinking. Then, Brocker opened up a second line of questioning. He repeated many of his initial questions in slightly different words. The results were the same: Valentine could not account for his missing phone and he could not produce an alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the crime. Worry showed on bo their their faces.

  “Let’s take a break,” said Brocker. “There’s a water fountain in the hall. Don’t go far.”

  Valentine stood and stretched. A uniformed police woman guided him to the water fountain.

  Michael Brocker walked around and joined the other two in the observation room. Each poured stale but hot coffee into a paper cup and begin to sip.

  “Whatya think?” asked Brocker.

  “It’s pretty clear that Valentine had opportunity,” said Matsuoka. “But, we don’t have a motive. Unless, of course, it’s sex. Adultery and violence come shrink wrapped together, even for otherwise nice people. I believe we should treat Valentine as guilty and see if we can prove it beyond a doubt.”

  “Rev. Foxx, do you have any opinions?” asked the inspector.

  “Do you plan to run a DNA test to see if Valentine’s semen matches what you found in Kelly?” asked Leona.

  “Of course,” answered Matsuoka.

  “I may not be an infallible judge of character,” Leona continued, “but Valentine just does not look like a killer to me. In fact, he doesn’t even look like an adulterer. But, the evidence so far is quite incriminating. I grant Tina that much.”

  The three sat and sipped.

  Leona broke the brief silence. “I think we should press for more details on the missing phone. This appears to be so damning. Yet, it’s the material only link between Valentine and the murder. It deserves further probing.”

  “I agree,” said Brocker. Matsuoka shook her head with approval.

  “With your permission, Inspector, I’d like to ask some questions,” said Leona.

  “Might as well,” responded Brocker. “We need to break through this log jam.” Turning to Matsuoka he added, ”would you like to join us in the interrogation room?’

  She nodded and all three re-convened with Doug Valentine.

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  “Doug, do you remember meeting me at the NASA-TTU reception? I’m Leona Foxx, a friend of Kelly’s.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Valentine. “Are you as overwhelmed by this as I am?” Doug’s face was haggard and suffering with bewilderment.

  “I’m devastated,” said Leona. “Kelly’s older sister, Angie, and I are BFF. I’ve known Kelly since she was a preschooler. I’m doubly sad because I feel her sister’s sadness.”

  Valentine looked downward and shook his head in grief.

  “On behalf of Inspector Brocker, I’d like to follow up on the matter of your cell phone,” said Leona. “Now, you do realize how damning it is to have your phone appear in the suitcase, right?”

  “Yes, I do. I do understand why the police need to interrogate me. I’d do the same. So, please go ahead.”

  Leona looked Valentine in the face and established eye contact. “Doug, do you have Kelly on speed dial?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Kelly and I spoke frequently, sometimes even from the lab to the lunch room. We worked together on many projects and we explored our pet ideas with one another. We were very close colleagues, even friends. But, there was never any adultery. She’s happily married. So am I. That’s...”

  “Doug,” interrupted Leona. “You have Kelly on speed dial.” Leona removed Valentine’s cell phone from the evidence baggie. “I can see it here when I look at your list of contacts. You include Kelly’s photo, along with the photos of many other people in your contact list. Did Kelly have you on her speed dial.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Did Kelly have your phone number memorized?”

  “No. These days with speed dial I don’t even have my own phone number memorized. Nobody does.”

  Leona turned to Brocker. “Do you have Kelly’s phone handy?”

  “Yes, it’s in the next room.”

  “May I see it?”

  “I’ll go get it.”

  In a moment Brocker returned with Kelly’s phone. Leona grabbed it and checked the contact list. She quickly located Doug Valentine’s speed dial entry. Then, she went to the recent call record. She tapped some buttons.

  “Look here,” said Leona drawing the attention of Brocker and Matsuoka. “Kelly has not one but two entries for Doug Valentine’s number on her contact list. The older one has Doug’s name and photo. The photo pops up whenever she receives a call from Doug or dials Doug as an existing contact. Now, look. Here’s a second contact entry. No photo. New name. Looks like ‘KN.’ This contact was added at 10:15 pm on Thursday.”

  “Mmmmmm,” murmured Matsuoka.

  “Here’s the logic,” continued Leona. “Kelly punched Doug’s number into her phone at 10:15 not knowing it was Doug’s number. She gave it the contact name, ‘KN.’ Then, at 11:16, she simply hit redial. She still did not know it was Doug’s phone number. Perhaps it was dark or perhaps she simply hit redial and then quickly put the phone to her ear without seeing the number appear on her screen.”

  “Sure enough,” mumbled Matsuoka. “Could ‘KN’ stand for Ken or Kent?”

  “We don’t know. But, if Kelly had not memorized Doug’s number and wanted to phone him, she would have hit her own speed dial, her contact with the photo. Right? But, she used the re-dialer for a number she’d punched in an hour earlier, not the existing contact. Could it be that Kelly mistakenly thought she was dialing somebody else, somebody other than Doug? Somebody who had Doug’s phone but was not Doug.”

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  Kelly Latham Compton’s Memorial Service wa
s held at the Menlo Park Presbyterian Church the following Tuesday. Closed casket. No cemetery ceremony.

  The post-service reception was held in the parish hall. Leona carried her coffee and slice of cake to a table partially occupied. She found herself seated in the vicinity of Chris MacDonald, Buzz Kidd, and Alan Kurz, all dressed fittingly in suits and ties.

  MacDonald and Kurz were already discussing the death of Wu Phee Seng and registering astonishment that the two deaths occurred so close to one another in time. They summarized the facts for Leona’s benefit.

  “And to think all this happened shortly after our NASA-TTU reception!” exclaimed Leona. “For the sake of Brewster, what do you think is the connection?”

  “Dr. Wu died in his sleep,” said MacDonald. “Most likely sleep apnea caused a stoppage of breathing and he suffocated. Just an accident. Just a coincidence that it occurred about the time Kelly was murdered.”

  “Still, it’s curious,” remarked Kurz.

  “Now that Dr. Wu is out of the picture, how will this affect the satellite work that you two are planning?” asked Leona.

  Kurz spoke. “Dr. Neshat has agreed to step in. He began work already, yesterday.”

  MacDonald followed. “Neshat will represent the TTU’s IA project. I’ll connect him with a counterpart at NASA and the two of them will program the satellite transmission system. Doctor Neshat has assumed responsibility for communications with implantees.”

  “Whom do you plan to appoint from NASA?”

  “Don’t know yet. No problem, though. We’ve got plenty at Moffat who can handle this,” answered MacDonald. “Maybe with Neshat taking over, we might not need a NASA counterpart.”

  Leona turned her attention toward Kurz. “How did Kelly get along at TTU?”

  “Oh, we all loved her,” said Kurz. “Not only was she a sweet woman, she was as bright as a flash bulb and as sharp as a laser. She belonged to MENSA, like most of us at TTU. Here the brightest of the bright make profound breakthroughs. Only the greatest intelligence can create amplified intelligence.”

  “Did Kelly make any enemies?

  “Oh no. As I said, we all loved Kelly. She made friends everywhere she went. I never witnessed any tension surrounding her.”

  “Was Kelly a card-carrying Transhumanist?” asked Leona.

  “No. Actually, she wasn’t. She was far more interested in dumb microbes than smart people. But, that’s okay. Not everyone has to think alike at TTU. Kelly enjoyed participating in our think-tank; and we benefited from her ideas.”

  “So, what’re you doing with people’s brains?” Leona said with a challenging tone to Kidd.

  “We’re making them better,” responded Kidd with a note of pride. “We plan to augment the human memory and then, we hope, we can amplify intelligence itself. Once we get the ball rolling, amplified intelligence will further amplify itself and then on and on until we have made our entire solar system intelligent. It will be a posthuman intelligence because it will eventually leave our physical bodies and become machine intelligence. We’ll throw away our bodies and fill the cloud with our thoughts. Posthumanity will be so much more highly evolved than we Homo sapiens are.”

  “Let’s stick for the moment to memory enhancement,” said Leona. “How will you do this?”

  “With a nanobiotech device that we implant in a person’s brain,” answered Kidd. “It will be connected by radio to Chris’s satellite, so we can pump in information in large quantities. The recipient’s brain will have immediate access to this data.”

  “I’m not getting the picture,” feigned Leona. “So, we’ve got this device implanted in a person’s brain. Just how do you communicate with it?”

  “The implanted micro-chip has an antenna,” explained Kidd. “No, the antenna does not stick out of a person’s head. It’s totally embedded. Still, the antenna is designed to collect electromagnetic signals at a specified frequency and focus it to a point where the signal can be read in the brain. Our nano-antennas are fabricated from gold and placed directly on a silicon surface. Surface plasmons allow radio waves and even light waves to be converted to an electrical signal which the chip can read. We will pre-select the frequency, of course, so that only one transmission will be received and read.”

  “Sounds precarious to me,” said Leona. “Virtually any computer can get hacked. If your satellite transmissions are like the internet, anything might pop up in my brain. If I had an implant, that is.”

  Kidd paused, his face reflecting the challenge. “Well, suppose instead of standard frequencies we would use quantum key distribution. Each transmission would be unique. Unhackable. What do you think?”

  “That would require practical application of entanglement,” lectured the Chicago pastor. “Quantum entanglement means that two sub-atomic particles are generated or interact so that the quantum state of one cannot be described independently of the other. The two particles are always correlated according to spin, momentum, position, and polarization. The Einstein-Podolsky-and Rosen demonstrated this in 1935; and Schrödinger called it the EPR Paradox. So, have you found a practical way to create your own private quantum internet?”

  Kidd and Kurz looked at one another with eyebrows furled quizically.

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  “I am trying to grasp what you smart guys are saying,” Leona said. “Now, other than this memory gadget, your work is supposed to benefit some future species, right? It won’t have any benefit for us poor backward human beings today. Am I getting you right?”

  “Au contraire, Mademoiselle. Kurz spoke impressively with the only French he likely knew. “The technology we develop to make possible the transition from the human to the posthuman will provide as yet unheard of improvements in our health and well being.”

  “How about an example?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I can handle it,” said Leona with a smile. MacDonald added a laugh.

  “Cybernetic immortality,” Kurz began. “Here’s how it works. First, you’ve got to begin with the information theory of mind I just mentioned. The brain and the mind are simply two sides of the same coin. Or, to use another analogy, your brain is the hardware and your mind is the software. Your mind consists in the information pattern provided by the synaptic circuitry of your brain. Follow?”

  “Yes,” mumbled Leona with a tinge of skepticism. “My brain is like my Dell PC. My mind is like Microsoft Word. Right?”

  “Precisely,” Kurz responded with a face full of glee. “And, as you know, you can remove your Word program from one hard drive and place it into another. Got it?”

  “Yes,” said Leona with a slight rolling of the eyes.

  Kurz continued. “So, our first job will be to discern the information pattern in your brain that structures your mind. Once we have that, we can upload it into a computer. Listen carefully, now, Rev. Foxx. We can upload your very mind from the hardware that is your biological substrate and place it into a computer, a silicon substrate. After we do this, you’ll be thinking from inside a computer. Even if your body dies and your brain is destroyed you—the conscious you—will continue to live on. As long as we keep the computer plugged in and make perpetual back-ups, you will live forever. That’s why we call it cybernetic immortality.” Kurz finished with a vocal swagger of triumph.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Really. Of course we have a few bugs to work out before we actually do this to a human being. But, this is one of the directions we’re going at TTU. Oh, one more thing. Don’t confuse cybernetic immortality with radical life extension, or RLE.”

  “Well, I am just the kind of person who might get confused. I don’t know what RLE is,” remarked Leona.

  “RLE is simply extending the physical life as we know it. CI means we extract mental intelligence from our physical body and place it into a machine. That’s the difference.”

  “Got it,” said Leona, shaking her head. “Do you guys believe?”

  �
��What do you mean, believe?” asked Kidd.

  “Do you believe in God? Is all your work guided by divine purpose?” asked Leona.

  Kurz responded. “There is no god but nature; and evolution is its prophet. And, survival of the fittest is nature’s Sharia.”

  “Well, for the sake of Brisbane! If you deny the guidance of a transcendent deity, then what motivates you to devote such energy and resources into developing a posthuman species that will leave you on the trash heap of history?”

  “Destiny,” answered Kurz. “It is the destiny bequeathed to us by evolution.”

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  “What about consciousness?” interjected Leona.

  Kidd paused before responding. “We have fed electroencephalographic or EEG recordings of brain activity into a sophisticated mathematical model. We’ve identified a neural signature of consciousness that is present in mentally healthy people. We also find this signature in brain-damaged patients who retain some awareness; but it is absent in those who are truly in a vegetative state. The signature is associated with sound and resides in the temporal cortex.”

  “You need more than this,” said Leona.

  “Yes, of course,” broke in Kurz. “We work with an information theory of consciousness, as we just said. We make two assumptions. First, consciousness takes in information. Second, consciousness is unitary and integrated. The information we take in is immediately integrated. That is, we integrate our new perceptions with what we remember. We focus and connect and identify and categorize and utilize. Our plan is to provide additional information right within a person’s consciousness that can be immediately integrated. At some point in the future we will extract the mental pattern from the brain, upload it into a computer, and discard the body. Then a person’s consciousness can live virtually forever in the web cloud. This will be cybernetic immortality, as we just described. Are you getting it yet?”