Accelerating Returns

by Peter Anthony

  Chapter 20. Recovery

   In Sault Sainte Marie, there was a celebration for the grand opening of Grams.  One of the owners stood on a chair, with his tie loosened and collar wrinkled. 

  "Ladies and gentlemen, the day after tomorrow we open in five major cities.  Finally, our dreams begin, and we can find out if business will make fools of us all.  Some say, 'Nothing ventured, nothing gained.'  I think at this point, on the eve of our venture, now that I'm vested in the company down to my last penny, that quote scares the hell out of me.  To tomorrow!" 

  Hands went up in the air and glasses clinked together.  Throughout the entire night, one, two, and sometimes three pairs of arms at a time squeezed Judith, or rather Julia. 

  Men from Talbot shared in the party via three-dimensional broadcast.  With projected images at every table, the real-time images of people in Chicago spoke with the people in Michigan, and in each city the friends and colleagues swapped tables whenever they wanted to speak to another group of people.  From the restaurant in Austin, Texas, the employees of Holographix International took part in the party, as did the employees of every restaurant in the budding Grams franchise.  More than just a party between friends, the night was a trial run, a dress rehearsal, and quality assurance test for Talbot's big investment.  Members of the media mingled with the businessmen, drank for free, and went home to write articles that praised the foresight of old Marcus Jovan in the virtual dining market. Moreover, the bloggers and attack journalists forgot about Talbot's failings when the Pelius scandal broke. Once again, Talbot appeared to uphold ethical standards that exceeded others. Several guerilla bloggers had confessed to working for payola, singing songs of accusation for payment. The sexism and racism charges against Talbot started to wither and die, one at a time.

  On the eve of the grand opening, Marcus Jovan did not attend the party.  He only sent a statement, wishing Julia and the other owners good luck. 

  Isaac stayed near Julia all night, almost doggishly.  Fritzing one too many times in the lab of Ploof and Ling, his demeanor changed from jovial to solemn.  Longstreet attended the event, and told Julia, "You can't uncook a noodle," and Issac did not laugh, but only observed the restaurant with contempt.  

  Isaac and Julia sat in a booth, connected virtually to Chicago.  She was a celebrity that evening, with her picture on the wall of the Sault Ste. Marie restaurant to prove it.

  A 3D couple appeared to sit across from Isaac and Julia.  The holograms of Robert and Rachel Lopez showed such detail that the fabric of Robert's Lacoste polo shirt showed every pore. 

  Across the room in a table in the corner, Dr. Gaveston, Ben Longstreet, and Marie sipped on coffee and water.  Longstreet bounced in his seat like a jazz drummer's high-hat, apparently delivering one of his rants. Gaveston noticed Julia and raised his glass of water toward her. 

  From her first look at Robert, Julia could tell he had regained his footing and no longer careened toward personal destruction.  Even through the projected image, Julia could tell that his neck was thinner than before.  His eyes were bright for once.

  Isaac said, "You two are back together?  That's good, Robert. Good to keep life together at home for the job."

  Robert said, "Exercise and Lexapro have helped. And I'm not interested in the jobs you're talking about Isaac."

  Julia said, "Exactly, Isaac. As far as I'm concerned, there are no more jobs to do."

  Isaac said nothing.

   

  Six months later, the Pelius investigations started to quiet once the news hounds found new meat to tear. On an ordinary morning of rushing to get ready for work, Julia read in The Wall Street Journal that Arrica Pelius had closed the final door of Pelius Research.  The company no longer existed.

  The article covered the firm's story from the moment Ploof hit the pavement. From then forward, the wolves raised at Pelius turned on each other.  Laptops and memory sticks, packed with proprietary information, walked out the door and blew to the seven continents of the world, taking bits of knowledge with them. Most importantly, the design for how to reproduce the memetic chip traveled off in rogue hands.  Thus, the Block on Ploof did not stop the machine-man integration. Rather, the math for linking brain to information engine had been cracked, and now the details permeated the atmosphere. The applications would still come, despite the public's growing disgust over far-reaching technology. A picture in the article showed patent applications lying in hallways, office furniture overturned, and angry graffiti sprayed onto the Pelius Research sign.  After reading the story, Julia cut out one of the pictures, a black-and-white photo of Arrica Pelius wearing a sling over her arm, standing behind her desk, looking down at the floor like she was contemplating the Forum in Rome. 

   

  While Arrica plummeted, Julia worked relentlessly for the success of Grams.  As part of her job, she toured and audited the worldwide operation of the restaurants, with a new location opening every two weeks, with reservations already scheduled two years ahead of time.  Virtual dining was the new Pet Rock, the fad of the age.

  One Friday night, she was in San Francisco, politely teaching a staff member about bettering her personal customer service metrics, as all employees were scored on thirty series of data.  Near the entryway of the restaurant, Julia described to the employee the importance of the moment when a person pulls the door handle of a business and transforms from a pedestrian into a customer.  In the middle of her speech, she stopped abruptly.

  A casually dressed woman entered the restaurant and started to peer around inside the seating area.  Seeing the woman, Julia rushed over and grabbed the reservation log, and scanned it quickly before accosting the woman. 

  Julia said, "Ms. Pelius? Arrica Pelius?"

  "Yes?"

  "It's a pleasure to have you here.  When I saw you I just had to say hello.  Right this way please.  I saved the best seat in the house for you."

  Arrica said, "Please, I don't need any special treatment."

  "Of course you do."  Julia pushed a button on her cell phone.  "And I'll see to it that your connection on the other side gets the same treatment."   

  A waitress came by to take Arrica's drink order. 

  "Drinks are on the house," Julia said, and touched Arrica's hand.  "It is really an honor, Ms. Pelius.  You've been an inspiration to me for a long time."

  "Thank you. I appreciate it."  Arrica smiled half-heartedly.  "I'm retired now, you know."

  "Yes, after all that," Julia interrupted.  "But let's not talk about that.  None of it was your fault, by the way."

  "Oh?"  Arrica laughed.  "Well, usually I hear otherwise."

  "The accusations are ridiculous.  At least they figured out who was guilty."

  Arrica said, "I'm just glad it's all behind me now."

  "You deserve to relax, Ms. Pelius. To have peace."

  Arrica laughed again.  "You are too kind."  She beckoned Julia to lean closer.  "I'll tell you a secret," Arrica said.  "You can call me Mrs. Jackson from now on.  I'm getting married this weekend."

  Julia felt a kindred spirit between them, with their shared ghosts of the past.  After Julia fawned with excitement over the upcoming wedding plans, she slipped away and told the waitress to give Arrica and Mr. Basil Jackson anything that they wanted.  Then, rather than let Arrica enjoy her fiancé alone, Julia could not resist the opportunity to eavesdrop - just for a moment - to hear a little more from the fallen Titan, Arrica Pelius.  On her phone, she plugged into a control panel that allowed her to listen to any conversation going on in any Grams restaurant.

  The image of Basil reached toward Arrica's hand, who connected to San Francisco from the Grams location in Chicago. 

  Basil asked, "Are you ready for this weekend?"

  "I will be landing and standing in the baggage area at three o'clock sharp."

  Basil said, "I just have to ask one last time.  Is this what you really wa
nt?  To live in Chicago."

  "Yes, Basil."

  "You know it gets cold here."

  "Yes."

  "And you have to hate the Cubs."

  "Oh, I hate them.  Hate the Cubs!"

  He laughed.  "No you don't." 

  "I've already bought a White Sox hat, Basil."

  "And you'll have me for a husband. Have you thought about that?"

  "Yes,"  Arrica said.

  Basil smiled.  "Just wanted to make sure."

  Arrica's voice, scarlet lips, and gray eyes all softened for Basil.  "This is what I want, Basil.  More than anything else." 

  "Me too."

  "You know, today, after the house sold, and all the paperwork was done, I took a long drive. I was noticing things that I've never stopped to look at before.  Actually, they are things I have seen, maybe every day, but I've never paused to think about any of it.  For once I took my time, the whole way.  I don't think I've ever felt so calm.  Never like this.  I stopped running.  Instead of looking at everything outside of my car as an obstacle, I didn't rush by and take in the world in a blur.  I drove way out in the countryside, where I saw some animals in a field.  Then I passed through a little town and I saw two people holding hands, and both of them were in wheelchairs.  Then more of the California countryside, and I drove slowly, the same speed as a hawk that was flying outside of my window.  In the next town, at a stoplight, I saw a puppy pawing at a old man's shoe.  And somewhere on the road, I just had to take a break."

  Basil said, "You had a moment."

  "Yes.  A real moment.  A whole day of moments.  It was too much to take in all at once.  So I stopped my car to think of you, Basil, and all that came to my mind was love."

  Basil leaned forward and smiled.  "I can't wait to see you."

  "After all that's happened," she said, "I'm ruined, and I've never been happier."

  Arrica touched the image of Basil, where his lips appeared to be.  

   

  From where she eavesdropped, Julia smiled and quietly slunk away, into the darkness of Grams, into the current of the mainstream, and into the manager's office. The time had come for a clean break from the past.

  She dialed Issac and waited for him to answer. A seismic shift occurred in her as she yearned the connection to be made.

  Isaac said, "About time you called me back."

  "Isaac," said Julia. "We need to talk."

  "Yes we do. So here's where we are at," said Isaac. "I'll fill you in. I've got a new Broker and two new Blocks in the works, both worth dying for. The first is a financial block. It's one of those foreign exchange plays that we talked about making, to upset the world economy. We need to start thinking bigger than small blocks on individual labs. I mean we need to take out the funding, pull the rug out, from the entire system - that's the scope we need to consider from now on. Oh, and I have leads on where new Memetic labs are springing up. It's big, Julia. My contacts are authentic. The intelligence is real. We can make huge steps this year, but we need to move while the info is still hot."

  Julia, no longer calling herself Judith, said, "I'm out, Isaac."

  "This financial thing could be the big one, one that slows science for a decade if done right. No one would have money for anything if we can trigger a depression. Not a war, because we know that will bump military research a thousand-fold, but a depression."

  "No," she said. "You didn't hear me. I'm out for good. No more of it. We were duped by a book. Think of it, Isaac. We were wrong."

  "Wrong?" Isaac laughed. "Oh, so you changed your mind now? Don't tell me you are still drinking Talbot's Kool-Aid?"

  "I am ashamed of it now, Isaac. And the advances are not going to stop, no matter what we do. What's coming is coming, and honestly, all we did was accelerate the change. We caused it to go faster, we didn't stop anything."

  Isaac stalled on the other end, but she could hear him breathing with anger.

  "Isaac, did you hear me?"

  "You're not out," he said. "I'll run your name to that agent faster than you can bus a table at your ridiculous restaurant."

  She said, "Go ahead, and I'll run yours to Pazzo. It works both ways."

  "There are others out here now, doing jobs. The Pelius Block jumpstarted the Terrans into organizing. It's all happening as predicted in the book."

  "I'm done."

  "You started me on this life. Now you are suddenly advocating for circuits in brains? Don't you see what's happening? The Pelius Block was the event. That was the turning point. Are you even watching the news lately? Legislation on artificial ethics is going to sail through the House of Representatives. You know what Longstreet said about that. The arms race is starting. China, Russia, Brazil and the United States - they are all stumping at the United Nations decrying runaway technology, but at the same time they are all building new Los Alamos to do exactly that."

  "I'm out, Isaac."

  "Listen to me. Spiro Ling has defected to Taiwan and is working on a new implant. His blueprints for the Tesla machine are already leaked to a dozen other countries, all of whom have their own replicas of Ling. Everyone knows that the theory works, even if we did destroy the first demonstration of the implant. Like you said, we didn't stop anything. Julia, we want change to go faster, until the people are fed up. If we ever needed to act, it's now."

  "No," she said. "Now I have a business to run. The idealism in the book didn't pan out in the real world. We only tried to force-fulfill the prophecies of a lunatic. I'm sorry, Isaac."

  "I'm not sorry," said Issac. "And I'm not done with this yet. I'm just getting started."

  ###

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many thanks to the editors who have read and made contributions to this novel. First, thanks to Khalid Adad, for being the first to read the novel and give suggestions. To my Zurich writing trio (Emily Lacika, Rebecca Squires, and me) for the good editing times we had at ETH. Also, thanks to my brothers for giving me feedback on the story. They helped me trim twenty thousand words from the final product.

  I don't know Ray Kurzweil or Bill Joy, but their ideas hooked me on tech futurism. Their differing assessments of the coming century sparked this story, and I suspect we are headed for neither utopia nor dystopia, but something between those two poles. I discovered Hugo de Garis after the first draft. His idea of the Artilect War is spot on with what I imagined for this story, but this story is set in pre-Artilect times.

  I should also mention the RAND Corporation for their excellent report: The Global Technology Revolution: Bio/Nano/Materials Trends and Their Synergies with Information Technology by 2015. This proved an excellent read about possibilities, and truly stoked the fires for this novel.

  And lastly, thanks to my wife, Denise, for listening to monologues about holograms, nanotechnology, and assorted pipe dreams.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Peter Anthony is the author of A Town Called Immaculate and Drill & Sanctimony. He has worked as a sports writer, magazine contributor, and software engineer. He lives in Minnesota.

  www.peteranthonybooks.com

  https://www.facebook.com/peteranthonybooks

  https://twitter.com/#!/PeterAnthonyBks