The Infinite when it was Two Digits Old

by Allen Fleishman

  ***

  The Ryans were met at the airport by Martin and Corey. Janet could barely restrain herself. She wanted to know how her son was. Corey would only say, “You will see shortly. He’s made remarkable progress. Even beyond what you hoped for.”

  They stopped the car at a small, barely used, park, when Janet noticed David sitting on a bench. Janet got out with Sidney and started to approach him. Fear was palpable in Janet’s face. David waved and had a dopey half grin on his face, one side of his smile was flat, the other a silly grin. Janet heard a cry from the side “Mommeeee”. She turned and noticed a young boy running to her. She turned to David. David gave a small nod. “Mommeeee,” she looked closer and saw the small boy with the Mongoloid eyes and cheeks and barrel chest. It was! It was Joshua. Janet turned and ran to the boy and bent low to pick him up. Unfortunately, Joshua decided to jump into his mother’s arms. They collided and Janet ended up rolling backward with Joshua in her arms. Sidney was rolling on the floor also. All three were crying and laughing.

  The tableau remained for a number of minutes. Each parent picked the boy up and held him in the air, to look at him.

  Finally, David approached, “I think you should have a nice long visit. Why don’t you walk back to our place when you’re done. It’s close”

  Janet looked puzzled. “We don’t have the address.”

  David had a half grin, “Then ask Josh to take you, he has it memorized and his GPS is fine. He often leads us back.” David started to walk back to Martin and Corey.

  Sidney asked, “Trust a four year old?”

  David grinned, “Now’s a great time to start.” David turned and left.

  ***

  Three hours later the Ryans entered Martin’s home. Both Sidney’s and Janet’s faces were beaming. So was Joshua’s. The boy was babbling all about what he had learned to do. Given that he had a digital photographic memory, even the reunited parents began to get tired.

  Martin grinned, “We use the off switch only as a last resort.” At first Sidney frowned, then gave way to a hearty laugh.

  An early dinner followed. Joshua was talking all about how one of his baby teeth was loose. He showed his mother and father how he could wiggle it. Dinner was followed by more playing, finally Joshua was put to bed by his parents.

  The Ryans returned to the living room. Wine and brandy glasses were filled. Martin raised his glass, “To our children, for they shall inherit the earth.” There was silence as each was absorbed with their thoughts.

  Finally, Sidney broke the silence, “David, if you said you would do a tenth of what you did, I would have called you a liar and left, carrying Josh and dragging Janet. You are beyond amazing. You’ve done the impossible, the unbelievable impossible. I am forever in your debt. How did you do it?

  “Actually for the most part I followed in my dad’s footsteps. He is the giant on whose shoulders I stood. I applied his techniques, although I am a bit better at it than he is.”

  Martin was beaming at David.

  Janet looked seriously at David, Martin, and Phyllis. “When we last spoke, you wanted to know if we could do you a favor. You implied we had a choice. It’s been killing me all afternoon. What could you want from us?”

  David looked at his father and Phyllis. They both nodded. David turned around and slowly raised his shirt, until it was off. He raised his long hair so the nape of his neck was apparent. On his back was a wire, which at one end was attached to a flat computer, riding on his hip. The other end went into the back of his neck. David slowly put his shirt back on.

  “Fifteen years ago, when I first awoke, I was like Joshua, except I was the only one. The only enhanced human. I’ve been alone.”

  Phyllis blinked and cocked her head to the side.

  David turned to Phyllis, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Phyllis smiled, “I know what you meant, alone as the only really enhanced human. Sorry, I know my brain is just jello.”

  David turned back to Janet and Sidney, “I’ve been alone, except for the last three months. I now have a kindred spirit, a brother. In turn, Joshua now knows that he isn’t alone. I’m there with him whenever he calls me, at the speed of light. I understand exactly what he’s going through, in a way I could never explain to you. I now have a brother.”

  “My favor I wanted to ask,” David’s eyes went down, “Would you adopt us? I’ll promise we’ll be a good family.”

  The Ryans were dumbfounded. They sat there.

  Martin laughed. “I believe what he means is could we remain good, close friends. My son at times is a bit melodramatic and is always overwhelming. I’m sorry, it’s something that Joshua will doing to you too. That is assuming that his babble wasn’t overwhelming enough. As David’s father, I know. You will soon feel that Joshua will be grabbing you and pulling you along the biggest wave of life, as he surfs it. You will never keep up. Get used to it. I can offer you a very unusual support group. However, rather than expect an answer, why don’t you think about what he said? You two have been through enough for one day.”

  After a short pause, Martin continued, “For the first time in my life, I think I have a surprise for David, although Phyllis has known from the beginning. Perhaps, she knew even before I knew.” Martin walked to Corey and took her hand, “Corey has agreed to be my wife.”

  David was indeed thunderstruck. Phyllis moved over to sit on the arm of David’s chair. She put her arm around David’s neck.

  Sidney looked at Martin, “Didn’t you have a favor to ask too?”

  Martin blushed, “Yes, it’s also a strange request. You two were the most senior, experienced researchers at the old Lepto-Molecular. For the past twenty years, I’ve been either taking care of David or running his companies. I’d really like to do something I always wanted to do, rather than what I had to do. Would either of you be willing to mentor a junior researcher? Me. Again think about it.”

  Phyllis looked at all the others. “And don’t forget about me. I realize that I will never have anywhere like David’s abilities. Compared to him, I’m always going to be a jello brain. However, I really would like to be enhanced too. Before you say anything, I know all about the neoplastic infant versus adult brain. But as an adult, I will still be able to have all my motor, visual and sensory connections linked to the computer. I would really love to see my first five-dimensional rainbow, or smell a rose, even if I’m doing the dishes at the time or talk to David, without saying Computer this or Computer that. To quote the straw-man, I would like to have a brain.”

  ***

  The next day over breakfast, Janet and Sidney discussed the three requests with Martin, Corey, and Phyllis. David was out of sight, playing with Joshua. Joshua had mentioned that David was going to take them flying as they left to go into the living room. The last Janet saw of them, they were lying on the floor, next to one another, head to head. She hadn’t heard any crashes into the ceiling, so she assumed they were safe.

  “Martin, Phyllis, we thought over the three requests. As strange as each is, Sid and I would be thrilled with each. I mean, an older brother for Josh who is the only one in the world capable of mentoring him, and capable of being his intellectual equal. Why wouldn’t we say yes, especially with Corey and you marrying? Martin, with your abilities, you’re proven abilities, we can take plenty of lessons from you. By the way, do you realize that if your work ever gets out, and they ever get over their sanctimony, you’d surely get the Nobel Prize? However, I hear your concern, you haven’t worked in a dot-your-i’s and cross-your-t’s pharmaceutical company, we’ll do everything we can.”

  Janet looked at Phyllis, “Phyllis, I don’t know if you realize what you’re setting yourself up for. It is a major operation. There is a chance of infection, and you seem incredibly capable right now. In addition, Martin and Dr. Mgumba could have done the operation at any time. I’d prefer a fully equipped OR and a full staff. But Sid, Corey and I would love to assist.”

  Janet th
en said, “I do have a question though. I know all about C H also being the initials of CompuHead Industries, and there’s C H Electricity, and C H Motors, but when will we meet this elusive Dr. Haines?

  Martin grinned, “You want to meet him? You’ll have to take a left at the third star, fly straight until morning, and you’ll find him. He’s the bigger child.” Martin pointed toward the living room where David and Joshua were ‘play flying’.

  The color drained from Janet’s face. “You’re joking! He’s the elusive Dr. Haines? Everyone knows Haines is in his late 60s.”

  Phyllis spoke up and corrected, “The computer image of Haines is a man in his 60s. For obvious reasons, David needs to protect his identity.”

  “He invented the gravity reflector?”

  Phyllis spoke, “And a bunch of other things like the C H car and his computer is twenty, maybe fifty years ahead of everyone else’s. I don’t think I can claim credit for it, David thought of it first and handed me a tool to research it, but he also invented a force field, a working force field. It takes a very large capacitor to generate it, and has to be constantly discharged then recharged, but banks of them are in the basement of this house now. David’s been busy lately, but when he gets a break, he’s going to look into making it smaller and portable. We don’t think it should be released however. He has already made a portable flying suit. You need one of David’s computers to run it though. The good news is that the computers are ready for you. They use a very high capacity disk drive. Much better than the ones that he sells. The bad news is that it will take a total re-education in values to use it.”

  Corey’s face lit up, “Sidney, remember that micro-encapsulation problem for drug LM15627 we were working on for the last six months? The Teacher, oh that’s the computer assistant I talk to, figured it out in 2 hours. She also explained why our other approaches failed. It was a pressure, micro-encapsulation, and pH issue.”

  Corey continued, “I asked her about LPH disease and she spent a day and a half working on it, but we have the entire program laid-out, including the drug, all the study designs, case report forms for the doctors to fill out, data bases, even investigators who have likely patients. She came up with a really easy way to screen patients for the disease too. The drug is administered using every other week infusions into the patient’s blood, just like Fabrazyme.”

  Corey face lit up, even though she attempted to be serious, “But Phyllis is right, the database has information that is probably wrong to even look at, like that my ex-husband’s grammar school girlfriend is four months pregnant and the bum’s in debt to his eyeballs, but can’t go into bankruptcy. But it really is improper for us to do that.” Corey was beaming.

  ***

  Two hours later, Sidney was sitting at the table with his son. The boy was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (without any crusts). Joshua was babbling, “And then we banked, past the birds, and we saw this cloud and David told me not to go into it. But I did anyway. Hehe. I knew where I was, I couldn’t get lost. So I raced him into it, I turned and then zigzagged all around. It was so foggy; I could only see 20 feet away. So I stopped and kept totally quiet. I was beginning to get cold and wet. And all of a sudden David came up from behind and grabbed my leg. I tried to get away, and we wrestled in the air. David insisted we come out of the cloud or we would immediately stop. I finally said yes. But he didn’t say anything about flying low. So I flew down, really fast. David was a slowpoke. I headed into a forest. I scared a couple kissing, and touched a deer. The deer ran away. But I was following it all the way. I kept putting my hand on its tush. My face got scratched by the trees and bushes. One time, the deer turned really, really fast and I almost went into a tree, but I stopped and found the deer again. David told me that the deer was getting scared and tired. That it’s wrong to scare animals like that. Dad, is it wrong to scare an animal like that?”

  The vividness of the video game that David had made for Josh amazed Sidney. It certainly beat Teletubbies. The direct question brought Sidney out of his reverie. He looked into the bright beaming eyes of his ‘newly reborn’ son. “Yes, Josh, David is right, if you scare an animal, it may try to get away and fall and hurt himself. Like you almost hurt yourself by running into that tree. And the deer will get very tired and scared. Were you scared when you were alone in the clouds?”

  “No, … well, maybe a little.”

  “Josh, you do know that where you went today is all make-believe. That you didn’t really fly. You were lying on the floor.”

  Four year old Joshua’s eyes opened a bit wider, in a solemn voice the child said, “Oh, I know Dad. It was a virtual simulator. David says we can do it for real tomorrow.”

  Sidney started to choke on his sandwich. He was barely able to regain his composure, “JANET! DAVID!”

  ***

  The next moon mission was all backwards. When it was time for lift-off, the small moon rocket ship jettisoned the liquid oxygen hoses. Space command had only had a short countdown. There was no roar of the rockets. The rocket was now only twenty feet tall with a streamlined bullet riding on top. The bullet was three times the size of any previous space vehicle. The rocket silently rose straight up, powered by reversed gravity. It only started to lose its acceleration after it was no longer in Earth’s gravitational pull. It was at this time that the rockets were turned on briefly to boost the speed. The thirty-second burn increased the speed to over 10,000 miles per hour. They would also be setting the fastest speed record for any Moon trip, one and a half days to the Moon. Another unusual thing was that the entire rocket and capsule actually landed on the moon, rather than separating.

  The moon rover was rebuilt to become a large triangular platform. The legs extended or contracted to keep it level when it had landed, when it needed to move, it flew to a new location. Due to the moons weaker gravity, the initial speed was much slower, but in the vacuum of space, the speed kept on increasing. There was no air to slow it down, unlike earth. The portable generator supplied by C H Electricity was able to produce enough power to reprocess the hydrogen and oxygen power cells from the crew’s wastewater. The scrubbers also were able to remove the excess CO2. NASA was being cautious, and set this first trip as a two week training flight. However, they were able to ferry two tons of building material to this future home of humanity.

  Due to the speed which all the planning and building had taken place, the fifteen man crew was still predominantly Americans, with two Russians, three Europeans, and a single Chinese. However, astronaut training was on-going with a much larger component from other nationalities. Charlie Haines had already donated 6 billion dollars to the UN, earmarked solely for creating the infrastructure of intra-solar system colonization. A subsidiary of Grumman Aerospace called C H Grumman was already making vehicles for interplanetary travel and farming of the asteroid belt. An entire launch vehicle system was being marketed for 50 million dollars each, cheaper than a jumbo-jet. Ferry services were already being set up with much smaller vehicles for the new industrial hub in the L2 areas of the Earth–Moon orbit. Two hotels were planned.

  ***

  David was putting into production a gravity generator. In contrast to the gravity reflectors, the generators required considerable energy for operation. The space hotels and a number of sports clubs pre-ordered a copy.

  ***

  “But Mommy, David says it’s perfectly safe. I know how to fly now. Can we all go? Please. I want to go.”

  Over the earplugs, both Janet and Sidney heard David say, “I’m very sorry, for not mentioning it. It really isn’t dangerous at all. I promise you. Nothing can go wrong. Nothing can go wrong. Nothing ca …”

  Phyllis: David stop that. The Ryans are very hesitant for very good reason. They’ve never flown. David’s taken me up before, flying really is quite safe. We strap twelve gravity reflectors onto you. Each has a failsafe, to descend gently, like a leaf. If you get lost, ask your earphone which direction is home. The three of us will carry two ext
ra earphones, in separate pockets, in case one falls or breaks. I don’t know about you, but I’ll still be holding David’s hands while he leads. I recommend you each hold on to Joshua’s hand, so he can keep you safe. If you do decide on going, you might have Teacher run a simulation. It really doesn’t compare to the real thing, but it will be fantastic fun, in any case. Ask to borrow the virtual simulation goggles. I used to enjoy swimming and snorkeling, flying semi-weightless is so much better. You really do feel weightless and like a bird – superman. And I don’t even like roller coasters.

  Joshua, who was told that the grown-ups were talking and must not be disturbed, stood there looking expectantly at his parents.

  Janet said, “I hate roller-coasters. No loop-de-loops period.”

  Sidney, who also realized that this was the cost of being a parent – amusement parks with its rides, agreed too. Fortunately, if in the middle to the ‘ride’ he decided to stop, he’d have the option of walking back.