“Some events snowball and begin huge divergences, though. The slightest hesitation changes someone’s departure time by a fraction of a second. They just miss a traffic light and now they’re a few minutes further back along the road than they might have been. Then they get into an accident which blocks the road by the Veterans’ Home and keeps a couple busloads of retired veterans from voting for George Bush, say, in Florida in 2000.”
“There’s a universe somewhere in which Bush won in 2000?” I could see Amit taking in the implications. “Closely balanced events – events that could have played out in a couple of different ways with significantly different outcomes tend to split reality into multiple copies?”
Marlena nodded. “And when that happens, at the time and place of the split, there’s a huge flux of neutrinos given off – the subatomic signature of reality tearing into multiple copies on a macroscopic level.”
“That’s how Nexus Detectors must work,” I concluded.
Now it was Rob’s turn to nod. “What the Civic Circle was doing here, killing your folks, making us aware of their conspiracy, prompting us to discover the MacGuffin manuscript, it’s been making all kinds of significant changes in reality. That’s the sort of thing Nexus Detectors pick up, and now Marlena’s going to build one for us.” Rob put a hand casually on Marlena’s shoulder.
Marlena shook her head. “Not exactly,” she cautioned. “I have the theory, yes. Making a detector that sensitive, though, that’s an engineering challenge. I don’t think even our state-of-the-art neutrino detectors would pick up the signature. I need a Nexus Detector to see how it works, to reverse engineer it.”
The Civic Circle had one. We were pretty sure the Albertians had a Nexus Detector, too, courtesy of Majorana and a well-funded development program. And Angus MacGuffin, may he rest in peace, hid one away just before he died. Knowing he was at risk, knowing all he’d worked for was in danger of being wiped out and erased by the Civic Circle, he’d tried to preserve his discoveries for posterity.
If only we could figure out where.
After Amit finally left for the evening, Rob, Marlena, and I went down to the refuge. I tried to get some time alone with Marlena, but Rob seemed to be hovering over her. The fatigue from my long day was catching up with me. I went to sleep.
I made myself breakfast when I woke up the next morning. Rob and Marlena must have been sleeping in. As a morning person myself, that seemed slothful, but it did give me a chance to review the data that Amit had collected and brought over yesterday. Gomulka still seemed head-over-heels in lust with our fictional Hungarian supermodel, Reka Kozma. He’d leapt at the chance to help her move into the U.S. and already paid the deposit on an apartment in the same building he lived in near campus. He was going to help her claim her worldly belongings when they arrived in a cargo container at the Port of Brunswick, and then spend an inaugural week together at the Civic Circle’s Social Justice Leadership Forum on Jekyll Island. That part of our plans was all set.
It was getting close to lunch time, so I headed into town for my appointment with Uncle Larry.
“Mister Pete!” Cookie opened the door with a beaming smile. “Glad you could drop by! How’s life been treating you?”
“Good work to do, and good friends, too,” I answered as she gave me a hug. “Can’t ask for more.”
“That’s the truth,” she acknowledged, showing me to Grandma’s living room where Uncle Larry waited. “Mister Pete is here, sir.”
“Thank you, Cookie,” my uncle dismissed her. “Pete, my boy. How was your drive?”
“Long and uneventful.”
He glanced at the door, assuring himself Cookie had departed. “And how are you coming along at TAGS?”
“Now that’s a bit of a story.” I explained how my assignment as Travis Tolliver’s personal assistant had been hijacked in the name of diversity by HR at TAGS in Huntsville and how I ended up in IT.
“HR is a necessary evil,” Larry confirmed nodding his head. “Our people in Washington write a lot of nebulous rules about ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ It helps make a place for otherwise not very productive people.”
“Why do you put up with it?” I was genuinely curious.
“Diversity is the religion of our age,” Larry explained. “Dare to question it, and you risk being burned at the stake as a heretic. You have to pay homage to it, or the peasants will come at you with pitchforks and torches.”
“This diversity comes at a cost,” I pointed out. “Better workers get shunted aside to make room for more ‘diverse’ candidates, time is wasted in mandatory ‘sensitivity’ seminars, people on eggshells worrying that some innocuous phrase will get them…”
Uncle Larry held up a hand to stop me. “Of course,” he smiled at my naiveté. “We’re experts at dealing with it. Promote a token woman or minority to the executive team, fund a scholarship or two for disadvantaged youth, sponsor a Women in Tech symposium to hire the most promising – and hottest – COGS.
“COGS?”
“Career-Oriented Gals,” Larry explained. “Preferably the kind who think it’s daring and empowering to be a bit adventuresome around the office, if you get my drift!”
I did. Creep.
“If you show how very enlightened you are,” he explained, “you can get away with most anything. Meanwhile, the competitors who aren’t keeping up on the LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP front get hamstrung by discrimination lawsuits.”
“LGG-what?”
“Lesbian, Gay, Genderqueer, Bisexual, Demisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Twospirit, Intersex, Queer, Questioning, Asexual, Allies, Pansexual, Polyamorous, and don’t you dare leave one off or you’re a hater!” Larry had a smug smile on his face. “It’s just like any form of business regulation. The people in the know write the rules and have the resources to ensure compliance. If you’re not clued in, well, the most trivial incident becomes cause for a pile-on. The activists get on your case, and you and your company’s name get smeared all over the press. You have to do the ritual walk of shame, and then you have to buy off the activists with some big donations to their organizations to get them to let up on the pressure. Meanwhile, we’re busy competing circles around the hapless fools and getting good press for our enlightened attitudes. Sure there’s a cost to the diversity bullshit, but so long as it costs the other guys more, it’s a competitive advantage.”
Larry’s strategy seemed to me like turning loose some hungry lions and hoping they’d be grateful and eat you last. I wasn’t going to tell him that, though.
Just then Cookie opened the door and called us into the kitchen. “Just poor-do,” Grandma insisted over her plate of sandwiches accompanied by a sweet potato casserole, breaded and fried okra, and green beans fried with a hint of ham. “Coffee, Peter?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Cookie must have anticipated that one, because a cup of steaming black coffee was in front of me in seconds.
“That’s all, Cookie,” Grandma insisted. “I’ll take care of everything else. You can have the rest of the day off.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” she replied. “Good seeing you Mister Tolliver, Mister Pete.”
“Good seeing you, Cookie,” I replied. Larry ignored her.
I got an earful about Grandma’s garden, and how it was going to be much hotter for the Fourth, “Just you wait and see if I’m right,” and how she was going to have to use her soakers to keep the flowers from wilting in the heat.
As we were finishing up, Grandma made her usual complaints about how rarely she got to see me. I explained Huntsville was a long drive, and I couldn’t make it home very often.
“Lawrence,” Grandma said sternly, “you really ought to get Peter a job here at Tolliver so he can start to learn his way around the family business.”
I started to explain that I actually was working for Tolliver, only for a branch in Huntsville when Larry held up a hand to silence me. “Experience outside the company will do the boy good, Mama,” he explained. �
�And there’s still some in the family with hard feelings about how his father took advantage of Amanda.”
“Nonsense,” Grandma scoffed. “Your sister, Amanda, wasn’t the sort to let any man take advantage of her. My how that girl loved her man Roy with a passion. I never did see why you boys and your father took such a dislike to Roy.”
I could see Grandma was making Larry uncomfortable discussing it in front of me. “Papa had his own plans for Amanda,” Larry explained, “that didn’t include her marrying Roy.”
“That Roy had a good head on his shoulders, and a lot of gumption,” Grandma insisted. “Reminded me of your Grandpa Tom. Family could have used some of that energy and initiative. We can’t just sit on what ol’ Tom built up from what his Grandpa Jake started. Gotta get some new blood into the family.” She smiled at me.
I felt uncomfortable in the middle of the family squabble, but it was good to know her opinion of Dad after so many years.
“That’s why Pete’s here, Mama,” Larry reassured her. “I’m trying to see if there might be a way he could work with us after all. We can’t go letting Mike or any of the cousins know about it, though, until the time is right. Right or wrong, there’s still hard feelings. They might throw a monkey wrench into the plans. Can you keep this a secret and not tell anyone?”
“Of course, Lawrence,” Grandma beamed at him. “So much anger and mule-headed stubbornness. Makes my heart glad to see you mending fences with Roy’s boy. Family’s getting spread mighty thin these days. Too many of my grandchildren and the cousins don’t appreciate it’s not all spending Greatly-Grand Jake’s legacy on fun and games. They have to be ready to take what we did and make it bigger and better. Like Grandpa Tom, or like your Papa did.”
I noticed she left Larry off that list of accomplished Tollivers.
“I have plans for young Peter, here,” Larry assured her. “Don’t you worry, Mama.”
“Well then,” she stood up. “Let me get you boys some of my apple pie, and you can get to your planning.”
A piece of apple pie and another cup of coffee later, I laid out the situation for Uncle Larry.
“I can’t intervene directly,” he insisted. “It’s bad enough that your Professor Gomulka figured out your Tolliver connection. I cautioned him not to let it go any further. Your effectiveness in the Civic Circle depends on it not being obvious that you’re working for me.”
“That’s not what I had in mind,” I explained. “I need you to insist that the install team bring along all the interns with clearances to help out with the Jekyll Island job.”
I could see him mulling that through. “Yes, I could do that. Give the young folks experience, provide a force multiplier on a crucial job, show how enlightened we are, and all that. Maybe even a good opportunity to get you or some of the other interns connected with Civic Youth.”
“That’s all it should take,” I confirmed.
“I hope you can deliver information worth what I’ve promised you,” Larry cautioned.
I smiled. I’d been expecting this. “I think I can earn my keep with what I’ve figured out already.”
Larry’s eyebrows raised. “Do tell.”
“How does TAGS select the start-ups it acquires and the inventors and entrepreneurs it hires?”
Larry considered my question a moment. “It’s mostly networking. Well-connected people see something interesting and bring it to my or Travis’ attention. If it checks out, we look further, and maybe we do a deal. Lots of those scientists and engineers are babes in the woods when it comes to finance. It’s easy to get ‘em cheap.”
I looked him in the eye. “You and Travis are being used by the Civic Circle, and you should be getting paid better to do their work for them.”
He tilted his head skeptically. “How so?”
“There’s a pattern in the technologies TAGS has been acquiring,” I explained. “They’re truly great technologies. Enormous potential to disrupt the status quo.”
He wasn’t convinced. I continued.
“Someone wants all these cool, disruptive technologies under their control, not so you or TAGS can make any money off them, but so they can be strangled in their cradles. They want you to fail. They will not allow those technologies to succeed. They are using you to make sure those technologies die before they can pose a threat, and they’ll never allow you to make money off them.”
Larry shook his head in denial. “Travis tells me we got one project going on now where we’ve greased the skids with DARPA – the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They’re the military’s high-tech think tank, and they’re about to fund a massive multi-million dollar communications security R&D project. We have the inside track to land the contract.”
He must be thinking of Roger Thorn’s UWB work.
“I guess we’ll see,” was all I could say to that. “I have a suspicion you and TAGS are being set up for failure.”
“Nonsense,” Larry insisted. “Is that all you have for me? Vague suspicions?”
I wondered if he was on board with Travis and Professor Glyer’s killbot scheme. This might be a chance to shut it down. I’d have to tread carefully.
“Are you aware of TAGS’ robotics initiative?”
“Of course,” Larry acknowledged. “Very promising project. We just won an $80 million contract to deliver robots to the U.S. Army.”
“Were you aware that TAGS is working from plans stolen from U.S. Robotics? And the TAGS design violates U.S. Robotics’ patents?”
“You make it sound like industrial espionage,” Larry said derisively. “It’s merely reverse engineering of a competitive project. Perfectly legal. Everyone does it. And the U.S. Robotics patents were developed under research contracted by the U.S. Government. They have a license to use the intellectual property.”
Ah. That was why they were so brazen about ripping off the other company’s work.
“All I’m saying,” I offered, “is if I could figure it out, I’m probably not the only one in TAGS to know what’s going on.”
“I hope you can do better than that, Peter,” Larry said, “or the deal will be off.”
He didn’t want to listen. I still didn’t know how much he really knew about the project’s real goal. I was going to have to find another way to shut down Glyer’s killbot project.
“I’ll just have to keep my ears open at Jekyll Island and see what I can do.”
“Very well.” He stood and escorted me back to Grandma. I said my farewells, and I drove back up in the hills to Rob’s place.
* * *
A sheriff’s cruiser was parked up by the barn. That was what a professional might consider “a clue.”
“Well, if it ain’t my favorite juvenile delinquent,” Sheriff Gunn welcomed me with a big grin as I entered the barn. “How’s your summer vacation going?” He held out a hand.
“Fine,” I replied, taking his hand. He always gave me a too firm grip. “How’s yours?”
“The usual,” he replied more soberly. “Found me some jaspers out yonder pokin’ ‘round. They figured to score some cheap meth from some back country pusher they’d heard tell of. Ran ‘em out of the county, but that’s how I reckoned I got me another meth lab up in the hills. By the time I gathered up enough on him to convince the judge to let me search him... well, it was too late for this girl he had with him. She OD‘d. Sick bastard just drug her body out in the woods. Didn’t even know her name. Doc Wallace has the body at his funeral home.”
“What brings you out here today?”
“It’s an ill wind blows nobody any good,” he replied.
Marlena handed me a Tennessee driver’s license. It had her picture but the name read, “Brandy Tucker”?
“Doc Wallace figured it out. The girl in the woods,” the sheriff confirmed. “There was something of a resemblance. Gave me the idea. Doc’s still pissed off the way the Feds made him sign off on your parents’ death without letting him examine the bodies. I called in a favor with him.
Doc ID’d the girl, name of Brandy Tucker. The official records will show we got us a dead Jane Doe – identity unknown – and ain’t nobody the wiser. That meth head’s probly goin’ up for a good long spell. And Miss Brandy Tucker here, who’s been driftin’ through from some small hamlet nobody ever heard of up in West Virginia, is about to settle down in beautiful Sherman, Tennessee, and get a job as a barista at Kudzu Joe’s.”
“With a bit of work and a few other favors the sheriff called in,” Rob added, “the paper trail will show Miss Brandy Tucker settled in here months before that big-city scientist lady down yonder vanished into the mountains.”
“Big-city scientist lady?” Marlena eyed him. “And the best you men could do was find me a job as a barista?”
“Ain’t got much employment opportunity in Lee County for big-city scientist ladies, ma’am” the sheriff pointed out with an obvious twinkle in his eye. “Particularly ones on the run from the law. Unless y’all want to make the commute all the way to the Oak Ridge Lab and apply under your real name.”
“That’s a one-way ticket to a federal penitentiary, or worse,” Rob pointed out. “It had to be something as far removed from your background as possible. And all of us are going to have to be careful to refer to you as ‘Brandy.’ You, too. Any slip-up or mention of ‘Marlena’ could be fatal.”
“I understand,” Marlena nodded, “but ‘Brandy’ is going to be moving on to bigger and better opportunities than serving coffee before too long.”
“Won’t this ‘Brandy’s’ family figure it out?” I asked. “I wasn’t sure I liked the name. It would take a while for me to get used to it.
“I cain’t find nobody knows the girl,” Sheriff Gunn shrugged. “Made inquiries on the pretense she was a suspect in some petty crimes down here. No family still livin’ I could find. Law enforcement in her hometown had no record of her since she dropped out of high school near to ten years ago. Sad case, but at least there’s some good’s come out of it for the Reactance.”
The sheriff had lots of questions for me about my experience at TAGS. It was clear he’d been reading my updates and reports.
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