Factoring Humanity

29

Frustrated, Heather left the construct. She visited the bathroom, then called Kyle’s office, leaving voice mail asking him to meet her for dinner tonight—Friday—instead of their usual Monday-evening get-together at the Swiss Chalet. She was desperate to know if her intrusion into his mind had been detectable by him in any way.

They arranged to meet at nine. With that much time, Heather decided she could prepare a meal for both of them, so she suggested, tentatively, that Kyle come by the house. He sounded surprised, but said that would be fine. She also asked him if she could borrow back their video camera. He made a silly joke—why did guys always think video cameras were going to be used for raunchy purposes?—but agreed to bring it with him.

And now Heather and Kyle sat at opposite ends of the giant dining-room table. There were empty seats at either side; the one by the window had always been Becky’s; the one opposite—the chair never removed, even after all this time—had been Mary’s. Heather had made a pasta-salad casserole. It wasn’t one of Kyle’s favorite dishes—that would have been too much, would have sent the wrong signal. But it was a meal, she knew, that he didn’t mind. She served it with a French bread she’d picked up on her way home.

“How was work?” she asked.

Kyle took a forkful of the casserole before he replied. “Okay,” he said.

Heather tried to sound nonchalant. “Anything unusual happen?”

Kyle put down his fork and looked at her. He was used to the perfunctory question about how work had gone—Heather had asked it countless times over the years. But the follow-up clearly left him puzzled.

“No,” he said at last. “Nothing unusual.” He paused for a bit, then, as if such a strange question required more of an answer, added, “My class went fine, I guess. I don’t really remember—I had a headache.”

A headache, thought Heather.

Perhaps her intrusion had had an effect?

“Sorry to hear that,” she said. She was quiet for a moment, wondering if more probing would draw unwanted attention. But she had to know if she could explore further, deeper, with impunity. “Do you get a lot of headaches at work?”

“Sometimes. All that time staring at a computer screen.” He shrugged. “How was your day?”

She didn’t want to lie, but what could she say? That she’d spent the whole day sailing psychospace? That she’d invaded his mind?

“Fine,” she said.

She didn’t meet his eyes.

The next day, Saturday, August 12, Heather returned early to her office.

She brought the video camera with her and set it up on Omar Amir’s vacant desk. She would find out at last what happened externally when the hypercube folded up.

Heather then entered the central cube, pulled the door into place, and hit the start button.

She immediately entered Kyle’s mind—he was working today, too, over in his lab in Mullin Hall, attempting to solve the ongoing problems with his quantum computer.

She tried again, calling out “Rebecca” over and over, while conjuring various views of her.

Nothing.

Had he blocked her out so completely?

She tried calling up memories of Kyle’s brother Jon. Those appeared at once.

Why couldn’t she access his thoughts about Becky?

Becky! Not Rebecca. Becky. She tried again, seeing if the little-girl version of her name was the key.

There had to be countless recollections of his own daughter stored somewhere in his mind: memories of her as a baby, as a toddler, taking her off to daycare, his little Pumpkin…

Pumpkin!

She tried that, the name accompanied by mental pictures: Pumpkin.

And: Pumpkin!

And again: Pump-kin!

And there it was, a clear vision of his daughter—smiling, younger, happier.

That was it. She was in.

But, still, finding specific memories would not be easy. She could spend years poking through this archive of a lifetime.

What she wanted were memories of Kyle alone with Becky. She didn’t know how to access those—not yet. She had to start somewhere else, with something she herself was involved in. Something simple, something she could easily key into.

A family dinner, from a time before Mary had died, from before Kyle and Becky had moved out?

It couldn’t be something generic, like the poster on their kitchen wall, illustrating various types of pasta, or the black-and-green decor of their dining room. Those weren’t tied to specific memories; rather, they formed the backdrop of thousands of events.

No, she needed specific items from a specific meal. Food items: chicken—grilled chicken breast, basted with that barbecue sauce Kyle liked. And one of Kyle’s standard salads: shredded lettuce, little disks of carrot, chopped celery, low-fat mozzarella, and a hedonistic sprinkling of dry-roasted peanuts, tossed in a red-wine vinaigrette and served in a large Corelle bowl.

But they’d had that meal a hundred times. She needed something unique.

Something he’d been wearing—a Toronto Raptors sweatshirt, with that dribbling purple dinosaur on the front. But what might she have been wearing if he’d been wearing that? Let’s see: she usually wore a pantsuit to work, but when she’d get home, she’d change into jeans and—what?—a green shirt. No, no—her dark-blue shirt. She remembered once choosing that because it went well with Kyle’s sweatshirt—a fact that wouldn’t mean a thing to him, but did to her.

That room. That meal. That shirt.

Suddenly, it all clicked. She had accessed a specific dinner.

“—tough meeting with Dejong.” Kyle’s voice, or at least his memory of the words. Dejong was the university’s comptroller. “We may have to cut back on the APE project.”

For a moment, Heather thought something was amiss—she had no recollection of that conversation.

No, she’d doubtless tuned it out at the time; Kyle often lamented budget cuts. Heather felt chastened—it had been important to him, and she’d paid no attention. But after a moment, Kyle began mentioning Dejong’s problems with his wife, and Heather did recognize the exchange. Was she that shallow, ignoring the serious problem and homing in on the gossip?

It was startling to see herself as Kyle saw her. For one thing—God bless him—she looked perhaps ten years younger than she really was; she hadn’t had that shirt long enough for him to ever have seen her in it looking this young.

Becky came in and took a chair. She had much longer hair back then, tumbling halfway down her back.

“ ’Evening, Pumpkin,” said Kyle.

Becky smiled.

They had been a family once. It pained Heather to be reminded of what they’d lost.

But now she had an image of Becky to lock onto. She used it as a starting point to explore her husband’s memories of Becky. She could, of course, jump into Becky’s mind from his, but how would she ever justify that? Although violating Kyle’s privacy was wrong—she knew that and hated herself for doing it—there was a reason for it. But to invade Becky’s mind…

No, no, she wouldn’t do that—especially since as yet she didn’t know if there was any way to distinguish false memories from real ones. She’d continue her searching, her archeology, here, in Kyle’s mind. He was the one on trial.

She pressed on, wondering what the verdict would be.

Kyle arrived at the lab early Monday morning. As he left the elevator on the third floor and came around the curve of the corridor, his heart jumped. An Asian woman was leaning against the railing around the edge of the atrium.

“Good morning, Dr. Graves.”

“Ah, good morning,—um—”

“Chikamatsu.”

“Yes, of course, Ms. Chikamatsu.” This dark-gray suit looked even more expensive than the one she had worn last time.

“You have not returned my phone calls and you have not replied to my e-mail messages.”

“Sorry about that. I’ve been rather busy. And I haven’t solved the problem yet. We’ve stabilized the Dembinski fields, but we’re still getting massive decoherence.” Kyle pressed his thumb against the scanning plate by the lab door. It bleeped in acknowledgment and the door bolt snapped free, sounding like a gunshot.

“ ’Morning, Dr. Graves,” said Cheetah, who had been left running since Saturday. “I’ve got another joke for—oh, forgive me, I didn’t realize you had anyone with you.”

Kyle put his hat on the ancient rack; he always wore a hat in the summer, to protect his bald spot. “Cheetah, this is Ms. Chikamatsu.”

Cheetah’s eyes whirred into focus. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Chikamatsu.”

Chikamatsu lifted her thin eyebrows, perplexed.

“Cheetah is an APE,” said Kyle. “You know, a computer simulation that apes humanity.”

“I really do find the use of the term ‘ape’ offensive,” said Cheetah.

Kyle smiled. “See? Genuine-sounding indignation. I programmed that myself. It’s the first thing you need in a university environment: the ability to take offense at any slight, real or imagined.”

The opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth issued from Cheetah’s speakers.

“What was that?” asked Chikamatsu.

“His laughter. I’m going to fix that at some point.”

“Yeah,” said Cheetah. “Get rid of those Vienna string instruments. How about a woodwind instead? Maybe a Bonn oboe?”

“What?” said Kyle. “Oh. I get it.” He looked at Chikamatsu. “Cheetah is trying to master humor.”

“Bonn oboe?” repeated the woman.

Kyle grinned despite himself. “Bonn is where Beethoven was born; a bonobo is a pygmy chimp—an APE, see?”

The Japanese woman shook her head, perplexed. “If you say so. Now, about my consortium’s offer? We know you will be busy once you do make your breakthrough; we want you to give us a commitment to immediately deal with our problem.”

Kyle busied himself with the coffeemaker. “My wife, she really thinks that whatever Huneker detected belongs to all of humanity—and I guess I agree. I’d gladly undertake to decode the message for you, but I won’t sign an NDA about its contents.”

Chikamatsu frowned. “I am empowered to sweeten the deal. We can offer you a three-percent royalty—”

“It’s not that. Really, it’s not.”

“We will have to approach Dr. Saperstein, then.”

Kyle gritted his teeth. “I understand that.” But then he smiled. “Tell Shlomo I say hi.” Let Saperstein know that they came to me first—that he was getting my discards.

“I really wish you would reconsider,” said Chikamatsu.

“I’m sorry.”

“If you change your mind,” she said, proffering a plastic business card, “call me.” Kyle took the card and glanced at it. It had only the word “Chikamatsu” printed on it, but there was a magstripe along one edge. “I will be at the Royal York for another two days—but swipe that card through any phone anywhere in the world and it will call my cellular at my expense.”

“I won’t change my mind,” said Kyle.

Chikamatsu nodded and headed for the door.

“What was that all about?” asked Cheetah after she was gone.

Kyle did his best Bogart. “The shtuff that dreams are made of.”

“Pardon?” said Cheetah.

Kyle rolled his eyes. “Kids today,” he said.