I kept to my script. “In the short term, quantum chip integration into existing Smartphone technology will lead to super-secure networks, making banking and online business safer. In the longer term, the quantum chip will lead to computers and tablets that can run programs that even today’s supercomputers are incapable of running.”
The reaction to my pronouncements was, predictably, slack-jawed.
They have eyes to see but do not see, I thought to myself. “To put this into perspective, a quantum computing device, using only 100 photons, could solve trillions of calculations at the same time.”
Again, the assembled reporters were befuddled, dumbfounded. The impressive sounding numbers that I had quoted meant nothing to them as long as their Smartphones and aug glasses might run more smoothly in the future. There was so much that they couldn’t fathom.
“The consequences of such a breakthrough are innumerable, and you know our lab’s policy on secrecy...” I trailed off to let the scripted joke sink in.
There was a smattering of laughter and grunts in the auditorium. They always scripted a wry joke or two to make me seem more affable for the public.
“But just to give you some idea of what we’re thinking,” I continued, “keep in mind that a device with such advanced hardware would be capable, at least someday, of sensing the world around it and rapidly interpreting what it senses in a way that would mimic human intelligence quite convincingly—and that is only the tip of the iceberg. Now, as is my custom at these events, I will take a few questions.”
Immediately, nearly every reporter in the room jumped to their feet and began shouting questions; in such a small venue, the effect was thunderous. Mark Olson, the deputy director and our chief financial officer, had advised me on numerous occasions to “hold” such moments, realizing they made for compelling theater. In such a scenario, I was the Shamanic figure, stirring up belief amongst my audience. It was not a scenario that I enjoyed. Theater, to me, was nauseating.
My aug glasses flashed the name of the reporter I was predetermined to call on first to answer his predetermined question. The answer I was supposed to give, already meticulously written and perfectly punctuated by an English graduate student from the university, was loaded and ready to unfurl on the minuscule TelePrompTer app on my aug glasses. All I needed to do was read my lines and stick to the script, and my reputation as the world’s foremost inventor and futurist would be further cemented.
I continued to hold and feigned that I was making a random choice.
But then something happened.
The feigning began to transform. Almost before I knew it, I was committed to actually choosing someone randomly. For a reason I couldn’t explain, I needed to have a choice. To save myself, I needed something real, something challenging.
“How about you?” I said, purposely pointing to someone I didn’t recognize, a plain-looking woman of about thirty-five.
The thunderous roar died down, and all eyes turned to the chosen woman.
She stared up at me, her eyes locking on mine. She seemed surprised and I thought she perhaps knew something was amiss. It was possible she knew that the questions were rigged and that she’d never expected to be chosen. She remained staring at me, unable to speak.
Mark’s picture suddenly appeared in the top right-hand corner of my front screen. The text, “What are you doing? That’s the wrong reporter!” suddenly appeared.
I narrowed my eyes, trying to will the woman to speak. I knew once she opened her mouth, there would be no turning back. I needed her to speak. I couldn’t stomach the idea of answering the scripted question, which concerned why our Center continued to produce the world’s most innovative breakthroughs in information technology. It was vague. Corporate. Boring. A softball. I wanted nothing to do with it.
“Okay,” I said, finally acquiescing. “It seems she might be feeling a little overwhelmed,” I added, smiling.
“Simon from GizBiz!” Mark shouted via text. In reality, he was standing only a few feet behind me, smiling I’m quite sure, not letting on to those assembled that something in our carefully constructed fiction had gone askew.
I turned to Simon, a twenty-something technology writer who’d masterfully achieved the look of an unemployed person living in his parents’ basement. In actuality, he was one of the country’s most respected tech reporters, thanks to his in-law connection to Mark.
Simon looked up at me, his expression befuddled. His eyes briefly darted up to Mark before flashing back to mine.
“Simon,” I began, resignedly, “Why don’t you take a crack at it?”
“Professor,” Simon began, his tone begrudging, as he was clearly trying to shake off the perceived insult of not being initially chosen, “how is it that your lab continues to produce the most innovative products...”
I’d already tuned him out. He finished speaking his question, and there was the answer, overlaid over reality, waiting for me to read it for the crowd. I refused to be a ventriloquist’s dummy. I removed my aug glasses and slipped them into the pocket of my pants so as not to subject myself to the inevitable panicked messages from Mark that would undoubtedly flood the screen. Keeping my hands in my pocket, I turned away from the podium and crossed the front of the stage as I considered what to say. “I wish you could all see,” I began, “the future that I see. It’s so much more marvelous than you think. It isn’t just a matter of faster phones and better graphics. It isn’t one that will make you more money. Money won’t even exist.” I briefly turned to regard Mark; though he wore a faux grin, he looked as if he were about to burst a blood vessel in his brain. “Mark doesn’t like to hear me say things like that,” I added.
Everyone laughed, including Mark, though I suspected his laughter took a Herculean effort to force out.
“I’ve seen the future,” I continued. “I go there in my mind as often as I can every day. I don’t live here in the present with all of you. I live there, in the future. When we reach it, you’ll understand why. You’ll understand how unbearable the present is to me—to be limited like this, to watch people die from sicknesses that we’ll be able to cure twenty years from now, to watch men and women go to war and die over oil, when energy from solar and plastics built by nanobot molecular assemblers will be abundant by 2040. In the present, we have to watch starvation killing millions of people, when food will be available via download to your replicator. We muddle around blindly on this small rock in a vast ocean of wonders that await our exploration. We’re trapped here like flightless birds, but we will be soaring through the cosmos just decades from now. These are the things that I cannot stand about the present.” I looked up to see the audience perplexed, which was as I expected. “I prefer the future. I serve the future, and for me, it can’t come soon enough.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I imagined stock prices dropping as headlines proclaimed that the CEO of the world’s most innovative technology company had gone insane. It was a brief consideration, for I had no patience for business.
I slipped my aug glasses back out of my pocket and put them back on, then smiled out at the onlookers. “Our philosophy here has always been not to look at the world as it is, but to look at it the way we want it to be, and then to make it that way. That’s how we stay ahead of the competition. It’s how we jettison ourselves to the future. Thank you.”
And with that, I exited stage left to a standing ovation. I suddenly thought of Shakespeare. All the world was, indeed, a stage and I remained a player, despite my ardent efforts to break free.
2
I walked up the slight incline on the small avenue adjacent to the Convention Center toward the corner, knowing my car would be picking me up in less than two minutes. I kept my head down low, but as usual, dozens of passersby looked up at me, their aug glasses recognizing me and alerting them that the inventor of half of the technological gadgetry that adorned their bodies was in very close proximity. The facial recognition application, appropriately dubbed “Pa
parazzo,” came preloaded on most aug glasses; it had turned the entire world into gawkers and stalkers. Thus, I kept my head down and charged forward, attempting to send the message to the world that I was a very busy man and should not be approached.
Meanwhile, Mark’s profile picture continued flashing in my field of vision. Desperate text messages, such as “We need to talk” and “Please wait!” popped up so quickly that I suspected he had them preloaded into his aug glasses. The board of directors had insisted unanimously in a private meeting that Mark’s glasses would always be linked to mine, lest their mildly autistic CEO run wild, destroying investor confidence and ruining the company with his erratic behavior. I was contractually obligated not to place him on a block list, even temporarily, and he was entitled to know my whereabouts at all times.
“I’m waiting for my car, Mark,” I replied, the text appearing almost as quickly as I spoke it in a cartoon word bubble. “Better hurry. Send.”
I slowed my pace as I approached the corner. I checked the GPS to see that the car was still sitting at the exit of the underground parking complex it had found nearly a kilometer away. I flipped to the dash camera and saw that it was sitting silently behind two cars at a toll booth. The hand of the driver of the front car was fumbling with a plastic card and a debit machine. I barely resisted the urge to groan as I considered the driver’s obvious resistance to superior technology. He hasn’t activated a Passbook account? He drove his own car? Why? Why on Earth? My car couldn’t comprehend this caveman-like behavior and, thus, could not generate a new ETA; after all, how can one place a precise time measurement on human irrationality? It would be...infinite.
I turned back to the Convention Center and saw Mark jogging up the incline toward me. He was famous too, if far less so than I was. I wondered what UHD videos uploaded to YouTube of him jogging up the road to wrangle me would do to the stock price.
It was raining. The rain was cold—icy. An autumn wind was cutting through my light sweater, stinging my skin. I hated it, but even more so, I hated the feeling that I couldn’t stop it. All I could do was hunch my shoulders slightly and keep my arms tight to my body to conserve heat, no better than a snow owl tucking its beak into its feathers. No better. How could I be no better? I thought. Why am I prisoner to my physiology? I was a prisoner to meat, just like everyone else.
“Beat your car!” Mark exclaimed, half-exasperated and half-proud of his achievement as he tried to catch his breath. “I gotta hit the gym, man.”
“Or you could have conversations the way everyone else does,” I replied, pointing to my aug glasses.
He bent over, propping himself up by placing his hands above his knees. “You can’t beat face to face for some things,” he said, shaking his head. “This is important. What the hell happened back there?”
I turned away and looked down the street in the direction from which my car would be coming. It was finally exiting the parking complex and, in sixty seconds, it would arrive. “I saved it, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did,” Mark replied, “but it was a close one. You nearly gave me a heart attack. You know you can’t go off script like that.”
“If my photographic memory serves, I’m still CEO,” I replied, somewhat tersely.
“Yes,” Mark answered, “and I want to keep it that way. Look, I’m doing everything I can to keep you inline so we can make it to the finish line together. If you go off script like that and start talking to people who aren’t predetermined...”
“I get it.”
“Do you? Because this isn’t the first time we’ve had this talk.”
“Oh I get it. Stick to the script. Be a prisoner to the board of my own company.”
“That board meeting happened for a reason. We’re all on your side. We want to see you succeed, but sometimes you’re your own worst enemy.”
I turned to him, my face like stone. I had nothing to say in response. What can I say that would be worth my time? I thought. These are the concerns of apes. I didn’t feel the necessity to placate them with a banana.
Mark sighed. “I think it’s time we revisit the idea of you talking to someone.”
That got my attention. He meant a psychiatrist. I grimaced.
“It can’t be easy going through life with your...illness,” Mark continued.
“High-functioning autism isn’t an illness,” I retorted. “It’s a difference.” I said, being generous. In my view, my “condition” was a gift.
“I’m sorry. Still, it can’t be easy being different, right?”
The conversation was becoming unnecessarily tangled in the sticky wetness of emotion. Psychiatrist visits were a very real threat—another part of the board’s demands if I wanted to hold my position at the head of my own company. If Mark saw fit, he could force me to undergo treatment and therapy. The idea of a monkey, albeit a slightly more sophisticated than average one, probing inside of my mind as though she were looking for tiny insects to pick out and pop into her mouth disgusted me. Out of necessity, I switched my tone. I opted to confide in Mark. He was hungering for emotion, so I decided to give him a taste. “That won’t be necessary,” I replied, sighing as I watched my car finally appear from around the corner. The ETA flashed to eighteen seconds, and it appeared that it would arrive exactly on time. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have acted that way. I’ve been...distracted.”
“What’s going on?” Mark asked.
The artificial electric buzz of my car engine grew louder as the vehicle pulled up to the curb. The back door opened automatically upon its arrival, as if by the hand of an invisible chauffeur. “Hello, Professor,” it spoke to me in a sultry, feminine voice. “Please enter.”
“Would you like a lift?” I asked Mark, arching a brow.
“Yeah, sure,” Mark replied. He pressed a button on his aug glasses and spoke to his own car, most likely still parked in the same parking complex where mine had been. “Go home,” he ordered.
We stepped into the car together, relieved to get out of the rain. The interior of the vehicle had already warmed, and the front seats pushed forward so that Mark and I had ample leg room. “Take us to Mark’s house,” I said.
“Okay, Professor,” the car replied. “I will take us to Mark’s house.”
I slipped off my aug glasses and started to put them into the front pocket of my shirt; it was a deliberate gesture to send the semiotic signal to Mark that I was fully engaged with his concerns and taking them seriously.
“Whoa, wait,” Mark suddenly said, holding up his hand to stop me. “Let’s have a game of chess while we talk. What do you say?”
I grinned as I finished placing the glasses into my pocket. “Sure, let’s play. Set it up.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you serious? I’ve made you so cocky that now you’re going to play me blindfolded?”
“Perhaps,” I said, nodding. “Let’s see if my cockiness is justified, shall we?”
“All right,” Mark replied, “if you’re sure.” He rubbed his index finger against the arm of his glasses and then spoke, “Chess. New Game.” A moment later, he craned his neck, his eyes focusing on what was an image of a chess board overlaid over his vision. The board was invisible to me, but it didn’t matter. I’d long since observed that my working memory was far superior to that of normal people. While people could normally only hold about seven items of information in their short-term working memory at once, I was able to hold almost unlimited amounts of information with my photographic memory. It was true, I didn’t need to see the board to defeat Mark; I’d never lost to him, though, to his credit, he’d pluckily come back for another game after every defeat; I had to respect that. However, I wasn’t in the mood for a long game that day. I decided to obliterate him quickly. “I’ll be white. E2 to E4.”
“Okay,” Mark replied. “E7 to E5,” he said casually; I could tell by his tone that he had no idea what was coming. “So?” Mark asked, returning to the matter of my behavior, holding on to my nugget of revelation
like a lion holding a zebra’s tail between its teeth, insisting on more than a morsel.
“So...” I began with a shrug, “I’m breaking it off with Kali today.”
Mark’s eyes widened. “Oh.”
The car rolled forward, taking us efficiently out of the downtown core, toward the bridge, and our eventual destination: Mark’s beautiful mansion on the mountain that overlooked the city. The drive would last nine minutes and seven seconds in total, according to the readout that had been displayed on my aug glasses before we departed. I needed to display enough emotion to get Mark off my back by the time we arrived, convincing him that my behavior was normal considering the heartbreaking circumstances of a breakup, thus allowing me to avoid the psychiatrist land mine. Again, I would be acting. The nausea returned.
“It’s just been tough,” I elaborated. “She’s a great person but...” I pouted my bottom lip slightly, “I’m just not happy with her. Bishop F1 to C4.”
Mark’s expression was grim surprise as he watched my virtual chess piece move across the board. “Are you sure you want to do it?” Mark asked. “Dump Kali, I mean. She’s been a great, stabilizing influence in your life.”
“Not as much as you might think,” I replied and I wasn’t lying. Every word I spoke was true—it was the emotion that was a lie. The truth was that I felt relief about the impending end of the relationship. Kali, my girlfriend of two years, had been an anchor, but only the kind tied around my neck, strangling me, and I was looking forward to cutting the chain.
Mark’s face was still as he concentrated all of his mental power on his next move, both in the game and in life. “Knight B8 to B6. If the problem you’re having is making an emotional connection with her because of your HFA, that’s the exact sort of thing a psychiatrist could help you with.”
It was difficult to remain patient. I hated it when people—especially Mark or Kali—used my autism as an explanation for any behavior with which they didn’t agree. I knew I had to keep my temper in check, though, so I forced as convincing a smile as I could muster. “Mark, not everything can be blamed on my HFA. Some people just aren’t a good match. Relationships end every day. I mean, you’ve been divorced twice, right?” Mark’s eyes shot up to meet mine, and I made sure mine were smiling.
Post-Human Series Books 1-4 Page 57