by Terry Persun
“Now you’re laying one unproven theory over another one,” Neil said. “Isn’t that like mixing metaphors?”
Dr. Steffenbraun, by the look on his face, was loving the conversation. “Keep watching.”
“I have been,” Neil said. He had never taken his other eye off the flat screen.
In another moment, something human-shaped appeared inside the hull in a crouched position. Whatever it was, it held a gun, turned toward the camera, and shot. The video went blank.
The face Neil saw just before the shot took out the camera appeared to be synthetic, twisted in an inhuman way. Even though it was a man’s face, there was something wrong with it. The bone structure perhaps. The latticework of muscle and bone that held a human face in place wasn’t there, or wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. He wasn’t sure what it meant. He backed away from the bench. “That face,” he said, “do you have stills?”
“We do.”
Neil shook his head. “It’s unnatural. Totally unreal in the terms of physical anatomy. Its movements. Are you suggesting this is our future?”
Dr. Steffenbraun stared at him.
“No. I know. You think it’s a robot. But you have no proof of that either. You can’t possibly tell from that short sequence,” Neil said.
Steffenbraun laughed at him.
“What? I saw it too.”
“That’s not it. Suddenly you’re not questioning where the thing came from,” Steffenbraun said. “Instead you’re questioning what it might be. I believe we are making progress already.”
“I didn’t say I believe in time travel.”
Steffenbraun held up his hand to stop Neil from talking. “The stills are this way.” He walked from the bench.
Neil wasn’t finished talking and felt jerked around by the doctor. Ordered. And now he followed without question, obedient. The man had no tact, no social skills.
The other men gathered around Neil as he followed the doctor through the pressurized chamber. No one spoke the whole time they waited for the green light over the door to blink on.
“Leave the booties and lab coats,” Dr. Steffenbraun said as a reminder.
Neil counted seven other men as they stripped off the supposedly sterile outfits. Two were dressed in FBI black, four in slacks and open necked shirts, and the last one, much younger, dressed in a t-shirt and had the look of a student assistant. Neil couldn’t quite understand how any professor would allow a student to be in on such an important project. Another notch against this being for real, in his book.
The group traveled down the hall and into a meeting room. They sat around a large, oblong mahogany table leaving one end open for Steffenbraun and the other open for a large screen that had been pulled down from the ceiling. There were no windows, only textured white walls. Steffenbraun sat down. “Introductions,” he said and pointed to one of the FBI men who sat at the farthest end of the table, closest to the screen.
“Agent Rogers,” the man said. Pointing to his cohort, he said, “And Agent Matthews.” He turned to look at the man sitting next to him.
“Professor Strofsky, Endowed Chair at MIT.”
The agents had started the organization for the introductions, so the man across from Strofsky went next.
Neil recognized the names, but not necessarily the faces. They must all use younger photos when handing in their articles for the journals. Like Steffenbraun, these were all older men, either graying or bald. Neil had no reason to research them recently enough to have seen them the way they were now. Of the four, two had dabbled in some advanced forms of physics that had to do with black holes, while the other two were experts in bioengineering, apparently to figure out what had happened to mankind just in case the image from the video wasn’t a robot. Neil introduced himself as a private investigator, then shot a look at the youngest member of the team.
The young man didn’t say anything. Instead, Steffenbraun leaned forward in his chair. “This is Donovan Smythe. He’s my assistant. He’s deaf. Trust me; he’s very reliable and very discreet.”
Blew that theory, Neil thought. He’s part of the clean-up crew. The issue of his deafness must have been an extra measure that made Steffenbraun comfortable, which made Neil consider the man’s lack of common sense.
Steffenbraun appeared eager to get things wrapped up, and pushed a button on a small control panel at his end of the table. As the room lights dimmed a photo from the video appeared on the screen.
The thing’s features appeared strange, but not as frightening as when Neil watched it move, so unnatural and inhuman.
“Professors Lowan and O’Brien have suggested that there is nothing human about the thing. Once a practicing physician, Dr. Lowan actually recognized the robot’s hands as non-living, synthetic tissue that’s used for prosthesis.” He turned to Neil. “They are robots.”
A lot of heavyweights to get to their conclusion, Neil thought, but here they were. He waited.
Steffenbraun motioned for Agent Rogers to speak.
“Ahem, well, Mr. Altman. With all due respect, we could probably handle this situation. But the President has bumped its status over to the military and they will be working with you. Well, not exactly work with, but hand over the situation. We’re here to debrief only.” Rogers glanced over at Matthews, producing a snigger. “There’s not much information to hand over, though.”
Neil let his eyes spread slowly so that each one eventually aimed directly at one of the agents.
Rogers looked away, but Matthews appeared intrigued.
“Here’s the low-down. This thing could not have removed the, ah, time machine without help. We believe there were more of these things that came through,” he looked at Steffenbraun to be sure his language was correct and got a nod. “We also believe that they are all armed, perhaps heavily armed. We don’t know why they’re here, but it isn’t for fun. They’re after something. You’re job is not only to find them, but to protect whatever they’re after.” He stopped there.
“And you have no idea what that might be?” Neal said.
Agent Rogers looked up and shook his head slowly. “We haven’t been on the case long enough.”
Not exactly an admonition of inability, but truthful enough, perhaps accurate. “I’ll need to consider the possibilities and get everyone’s opinion no matter how far out it might be. I’ll also need access to research.” He looked around the table. “Military?”
Donovan raised his hand and talked in the monotone of the deaf. “I can take care of that.”
“He’s my liaison with General Harkins from the Pentagon. Did I forget to mention that?” Steffenbraun looked around the table. “I hate working with the military.”
Already the job felt disorganized and perhaps purposely segmented. Neil didn’t believe it yet. It might be difficult to rearrange a standard robot to look like the thing on the video, but not impossible, especially with the military involved. But he couldn’t figure out why they’d be involved in a hoax.
“And I’ll need assistants. You two.” He pointed to the FBI men.
“Really?” Rogers said. He and Matthews made eye contact and nodded their heads together. “We’d love that, Sir.”
“Good,” Neil said. “I’ll start with you two. The rest of you can go until I need to talk with you.” It was his turn to take control. He could see in Steffenbraun’s face that it was hard for him to relinquish, but he allowed it anyway. He immediately rose from his chair and pushed the button to clear the screen.
“Leave it,” Neil said. “I want to memorize it.”
Steffenbraun pushed the button again and the photo reappeared. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Altman?”
Neil looked up at him. The doctor wasn’t happy at the moment, and Neil let him wait a few seconds before answering. “No. You’re dismissed.”
CHAPTER 5
“FENNY HAD TIMING CIRCUITS, but ignored them. He felt enthralled, exhilarated. That’s how he explained it when his neurogrid cir
cuits had difficulty taking in all the information it received. At first, he sat on the ground and let his fingers rest as long as necessary to interpret the sensations. The way he understood the circuitry was that it organized itself less like computer data and more like interconnecting links similar to a human’s brain. Not random, but random-like, so that less energy was expended.
The moon eventually ducked below the horizon and the forest became dark, lighted only by stars, which were out in force, but dim next to the moon’s intensity.
Fenny closed his lenses. He was totally familiar with his location. There was no need for him to strain his circuits trying to see through the darkness. Without video data streaming in there was more space for him to monitor the sensors in his hands.
Sitting quietly, he wiggled his fingers ever so slightly as he touched and memorized sticks and leaves and rocks, whatever lay on the ground around him. Using touch, he was able to replicate shape and texture and build a model in his memory, then transfer that over to his mind, his neurogrid circuits, the grid, as Dr. Klein called it. The model may not turn out to be perfect, but the general item could be identified, be it a stick, a leaf, or stone. He was learning how to interpret using his new sensor inputs. It wasn’t so difficult, after all.
Fenny didn’t open his lenses until the sounds around him changed dramatically. At first the chattering of birds was faint and occasional, different than the owls he had heard earlier in the morning. Eventually, the sound became so loud that it was annoying. Fenny searched his memory for a reason this could be and when he found it snapped his lenses open and checked his timing circuits.
Morning.
He lifted onto his mechanical legs and let his eye fibers rotate. Dr. Klein had warned him about being seen, especially with his new hands. He held them up and let one eye focus on the hands, while the other eye scanned the area for people. Few passed through the area, but the occasional hiker would wander onto the paths.
Streaks of dirt covered his palms and stained his fingertips. He touched one hand to the other to register the sensation of the dirt, but experienced an entirely new perception that he could only identify as feedback. One hand touching the other activated both sets of sensors, one against the other. They registered simultaneously, continually adjusting to one another.
He let the uniqueness of the tightly adjusting feedback between the two hands sink in. He allowed the grid to play with the data, roll it around, reorganize it, and see it from contrasting directions. First he would focus his inputs on one hand, then the other.
As he stood there, he heard another sound, a familiar one. The sound of Dr. Klein’s voice yelling for him.
Fenny dropped his left hand to his side and let his top hand hang in the air as he turned and walked as quickly as he could toward Dr. Klein’s voice. “Oh, no, oh, no,” he said as he moved. He fully understood what was going on. Dr. Klein was worried and looking for him.
The doctor was in his seventies and should not be upset. Fenny knew about heart attacks, about stress, and he needed the doctor to be alive, to answer the phone, and to continue to keep his funding. Fenny’s very life depended on it.
When Fenny rounded a corner in the path, he almost ran into Dr. Klein. The man’s face had sweat running from his forehead. His neck was wet. He still wore his house slippers.
“I am sorry. I am sorry.” Fenny said.
Dr. Klein reached out and rested a hand on Fenny’s can-like torso. He leaned over and spit on the ground. He breathed heavily but did not talk.
Fenny said that he was sorry again, this time putting emphasis on “am” to suggest that he really meant what he said. He learned that approach from Dr. Klein when he talked on the phone to someone who didn’t know him.
When Dr. Klein didn’t respond, Fenny allowed his top hand to swing over and touch the top of the doctor’s head. Hair felt different than he would have expected by its appearance, nothing like the items found in the forest. He had read enough to know that the word to use was soft, but the texture was more than that to him. It was somehow comforting, a word he had interpreted — along with many others — when he first got his neurogrid circuits. He let his hand run down the doctor’s nape, and along his shoulder. Fenny’s fingers patted Dr. Klein’s shoulder while the heel of his hand rested against the old man’s dampened shirt. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m here. I just went for a walk and got caught up in all the new data.” He still didn’t know what else to call it. That’s what it was to him, data, for now. But that was changing, he knew, as he interpreted the data through different circuitry. The data turned into much more than words like rough and smooth. If he counted the variety of sensations he had while running his hand along Dr. Klein’s head and shoulders, then loving appeared to be correct, similar to, but slightly different from comforting. But he couldn’t be sure. They were only his interpretations at the moment. He would need to continue to experience the feelings to sort them out perfectly.
When the doctor caught his breath, he stared at Fenny’s left hand, which stuck out at the end of his short-stroke linear and rotary appendage. He slowly reached for the other hand and removed it from his shoulder. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Fenny could see the anger in Dr. Klein’s eyes. He recognized that when Dr. Klein narrowed the sight passage, he was unhappy with something. At the moment, the something was Fenny, and he knew it. He also understood that there would be some sort of punishment for the initiative he had taken. But why? Dr. Klein had trained him to be inquisitive, to “just complete the job” whenever he worked on a project. His decision had been based on logic, on his interest in completing the experiment, testing it. Fenny didn’t understand what he had done wrong. Why would Dr. Klein be upset?
“If anyone saw you out here, I’d be put into jail, and you’d be dismantled.”
That was the reason for the anger. That was why the Doctor worried. Fenny became concerned now, too. He couldn’t be found like this. He quickly lowered his top arm and moved both of his hands as far behind him as he could. “We should return,” he said. “Now.”
“Let me catch my breath.” Dr. Klein continued to lean on Fenny. His voice became scratchy from the massive air intake drying out his throat.
Fenny ran through his memory. “You need water,” he said.
Dr. Klein nodded and stood straight, letting his hand drop from Fenny’s torso.
The only sensation Fenny had of Dr. Klein’s hand being removed was a slight change in his knee and ankle pressure sensors, very slight. With no sensors on his torso except a few temperature sensors, he couldn’t feel the doctor’s hand. Oh, to have sensors everywhere. Humans had no idea how amazing they were, how unbelievable their existence must be. But Fenny knew and wished to be like them, like Dr. Klein. “What is it like to have sensors on all of your skin?”
Dr. Klein didn’t answer. “Follow me. We’ve got to get back.” He stomped over the path. “And watch for people. There shouldn’t be any out here, but you never know.” He lifted his arm, one finger pointing to the sky. “And UPS. You know they come every few days. Which reminds me. You’ve got to hide from them when they show up from now on. They should not see your hands.” Then he mumbled a few more sentences that Fenny’s audio sensors couldn’t pick up.
He was falling behind. Mechanical legs built onto the Quad-5 were not meant for speed, but for strength. He could pick up over a hundred and fifty pounds with his short arm, adjust his internal ballast and balance circuitry, and carry the load as far as necessary. According to what he read, higher speeds could reduce the torque that his leg motors could handle. “Doctor,” he said in a high volume.
Dr. Klein stopped, but did not turn around. “I’ll wait,” he said.
“It is not my fault that I am slow,” Fenny said in very low volume, knowing that Dr. Klein would not be able to hear. He considered ordering different components for his legs. He had not had the need to pick up anything over 47.8 pounds since he’d been with the doctor. New
motors would allow him to move faster.
When Fenny caught up, the doctor began to walk again, never turning around, never acknowledging that Fenny was near.
Fenny scanned the area all the while he walked. He also began to run through scenarios of what the doctor might do to punish him for something that he was unclear about doing wrong. What had the doctor done before? Turn off his motion circuits. He had done that so that Fenny couldn’t move about or do anything, but “sit and think about what he’d done” is how he put it. He could also disconnect Fenny’s lenses so that he couldn’t see, but that wouldn’t matter a whole lot because Fenny could enter memory and reconstruct everything the way it was. Once he traveled a path, it was simple to replicate his movements, unless he had dumped that particular memory. Then Fenny ran across another possibility. Dr. Klein could disconnect his neurogrid.
Fenny slowed. Unlike anything he had run across before, he had a sense of hesitation in his motion circuits. Where was the hesitation coming from? What was happening to him? He selected to shift his motion circuits from the grid to digital control, at which time he speeded back to normal. The hesitation was curious. He would have to research what that might be when he got the time. His neurogrid circuits, he sensed, were still very reluctant to send a signal through to his legs.
At the house, Dr. Klein held the door for Fenny to go past him. Fenny’s eye, chest high next to the doctor, watched the man’s expression as he walked past. Nothing changed.
“What do you plan to do to me?” Fenny said.
“I don’t know,” Dr. Klein said. “You weren’t thinking.”
“But I was thinking,” Fenny said. “I am always thinking. I do not know what it is like to stop thinking. All I did was ‘just complete the job’ as you have told me many times.” Fenny had no memory of ever providing a retort to Dr. Klein’s comments and wasn’t able to understand clearly why he was doing it at that time. He only knew that he didn’t want his neurogrid shut off. He didn’t even know why that mattered, in a logical sense.