Professor of Enigmas (Evil Tech Support Origins Book 1)

by Henry Andrew Wong

  Bixby’s model interfaced with the brain passively—no effort was required to connect and communicate. Learning to control a machine would be similar to learning how to walk, but control was instinctive and permanent once acquired. This made the technology revolutionary—it essentially extended human bodies to machines.

  Once established, commanding a machine was like moving an arm—it could even become autonomic where a person’s brain could control and benefit from added organs. The diversity of applications was as wide as the number of machines in existence now and in the future. It was a leap in human capabilities, possibly a next step in evolution. Pander was going to shut it down out of spite.

  Bixby said, “You think it will cost too much to make.”

  “I think it has potential, but not in the way you might.” Of course. Pander always thought of himself as a commercial genius cheated of his full potential, thrown into operational responsibilities below his abilities.

  If Bixby was honest, Pander was incredibly good at what he did, but honesty wasn’t what he needed at the moment. Bixby said, “What way would that be?”

  “We should sell it to Laramy Orbital.”

  Chapter 5: Ordered

  The security officer had escorted Bixby to the hangar and left him with a cup of tea. Bixby sloshed it on the floor by accident.

  He was mopping it up with his hands when Ellen, the director who had paved his ascension in the boardroom, approached him from the private entrance. She said, “Leave it alone. We have people for that. You should know that by now.”

  He stood up to follow her. She led him to the center, where a fighter craft was hidden under a long white cloth. Ellen gestured for him to help and they pulled it off together. The steely curves of the ship accelerated the slip of the cloth—it was like nothing he had ever seen. Beautiful.

  Ellen said, “This is the Blazon Proxima. It reaches sublight speeds.”

  Bixby held back a burst of laughter, subsuming it within a cough. “That’s not possible. If there was such thing as a working warp drive beyond tiny particles, I would know about it.”

  Ellen caressed the smooth curves of the Proxima. She said, “Bixby, I helped you in that boardroom for a reason. I want you to get your lab, but you need to be on-side.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Explain to me how a warp drive works.”

  Bixby assumed she knew the basic theory, but he obliged. “Well…we initially thought the speed of light was the limit, but it turns out we could possibly go faster by sort of folding space.”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  He didn’t understand the point of this, but she sounded insistent, and she held his fate in her hands. Did Pander rat him out after all?

  Ellen tilted her head and frowned. “Please go on.”

  “We gave up on sublight travel in the late 21st century because going that fast would be pointless. It takes too much energy, the radiation would kill travelers, and the people launching the vessel would be too long dead to ever benefit.”

  She wheeled her hand, encouraging him to speed up.

  Bixby said, “But we figured out it might be possible to keep the ship stationary and move spacetime instead—building what’s called a warp field. A ship would need a device to lengthen spacetime behind it and shorten spacetime in front of it—that could move the ship unlimited distances in short amounts of time.”

  Ellen said, “So the ship stays still—and you create a moving tunnel around it.”

  Bixby hesitated. He reminded himself that manager-speak could be non-specific, even misleading—any differences from what was said later could be explained away as details or simply as what was meant and misunderstood. It was the magic of middle management. He said, “Something like that, yes.” Then he looked at the Proxima. “Are you saying this ship creates warp fields?”

  “No. I’m saying you’re going to make it do that.”

  Bixby widened his eyes. “I appreciate the compliment, but you’re talking about the hardest travel problem ever identified.”

  Ellen said, “You really are a professor of enigmas, aren’t you?” Then she reached into her pocket and produced a hand full of pebbles with green tinges on them. She had somehow gotten hold of his phase crystals. “You’ll get your space station, but you’d better deliver on warp drive.”

  Chapter 6: Authorized

  Ellen said, “The generators are dual-redundant, water shipments will arrive every sixty days and you have use of a shunt line. Use the line sparingly though; it’s metered on your monthly budget at market rates.”

  Bixby said, “Even for the weekly update calls?”

  “Of course. We aren’t a charity.” She didn’t wait for Bixby to reply. Ellen just turned and walked away, waving in the other direction. “Good luck, Professor. Make it happen.”

  He said, “I’m not a professor; I’m an inventor,” knowing it was only to himself. Ellen had given him the tour already and her ship was spinning up to leave. The new remote station could only host three vessels at a time—the other two were a GROK-95 Clydesdale for light cargo and the Blazon Proxima—Bixby’s assignment.

  The corporate transport lifted twelve feet off the hangar floor, hovered towards the exit portal and zipped away. Bixby finally had a moment to absorb his new home. The staff would be arriving within the week.

  He had handpicked three of them, but the other sixteen were most likely assigned to keep an eye on him. Bixby was the only employee at Smeiser without an implant—at least as far as he knew. His exemption was hard-earned but that didn’t mean they trusted him. It was also temporary.

  He sat on the steps of the control platform in the hangar. It felt better than he had dreamed. The station was compact and practical, just as he had requested—small enough to evade all foreseeable scans yet fully featured for his work.

  And it was located at the far reaches of Smeiser space just as he had requested, away from the prying eyes of their chief competitors. The only civilization within reach was the Straddling Skunk, named for its location on the border of regions dominated by Laramy Orbital and Smeiser Spaceworks.

  All of this was here—he was here—because he had impressed Ellen. He had asked for the space station, and she made it happen. Bixby was a long way from his father’s grip. He suppressed the thought, allowing only enough of the memory to identify his father as someone he had finally vanquished.

  His father was removed from ever physically humiliating him again the day Bixby stepped foot into Smeiser’s corporate headquarters. The bully hadn’t even gotten the location right. Bixby thought, He said it was on the moon. Today felt like a final victory. Still, he wondered how much his parents had received from Smeiser five years ago. They sold their son. What would he be worth to them now, he wondered.

  It didn’t matter. The lab was his—not in legal title, but in practicality. He not only had full control of his own space station now—it was the fruit of his own designs and came with specific capabilities that would have required years of navigating bureaucracy if not for Ellen. When she had asked him for a name, he chose Venture Lab. It summed up its meaning to him.

  Management had initially agreed to his proposal for three prototypes, but Ellen had liked the last one best. Her exact role in the company wasn’t clear, but the other directors deferred to her in a way that suggested significant authority. Just as likely, she had other leverage over them.

  He stood up and surveyed the long hallway to the heart of the station. It was littered with an aisle of Sci-suits equipped with everything from mechanical arms to cutting lasers. They were the latest models from Smeiser—not quite Laramy-quality but they would do.

  Most of what Bixby had in mind relied on his own inventiveness anyway; he would only rely on the staff for physical functions like cutting, welding, and reacting volatile substances in the vacuum of space.

  It was his twentieth birthday and, for the first time in his life, he felt free. But then he thought of the deal he had m
ade with Pander before shipping out from headquarters.

  Chapter 7: Disrupted

  Bixby sat at a terminal in Venture Lab’s compact control room with a glass of synthetic booze. The rounded walls meant to settle inhabitants into a sense of collaborative productivity. He would rather it resemble a battleship’s bridge, but it was much smaller, just as he had requested out of practicality. His designs and intent for Venture Lab joined science, stealth, and secrets.

  Smeiser could rely on the small station’s remote location to an extent but there were still long-range scanners sensitive to materials used in weaponry. Bulky armaments would have added unnecessary detectable mass, so he requested a minimal arsenal—much less equipment was required to control it.

  He took a gulp of the hard drink and thought of something he saw in the Hall of Artifacts back at Smeiser HQ. An idea came to him, but he tucked it away for later.

  Bixby’s crew hadn’t arrived yet. They had given him the corporate rank of Lab Captain, roughly corresponding to the military equivalent of a remote station commander—putting him in charge whenever no directors were present. It remains to be tested, he thought. A military attache would be joining from the coalition governments of the moon—Smeiser shared their interests.

  For the time being, he was alone at the station, except for Niner. He began to like the feeling almost immediately. Solitude was a luxury he hadn’t experienced in childhood—his father was a proactive bully. He knew such things shaped men, but he decided to be an exception in that too. His lab at Smeiser headquarters had been an open tourist attraction for the bureaucrats and operations personnel like Pander—this was the first true privacy he had enjoyed.

  But it won’t last.

  He had tasked Niner with detailed equipment surveys and given her free roam of the entire station. She scooted up near his console and offered him a report of station conditions for download—he had authenticated earlier. He said, “Just the basics please.”

  “Temperatures are within normal bounds, station integrity is normal, water supply is in surplus relative to operations—” The general buzzer cranked up—someone was calling on the shunt line.

  Why doesn’t this thing have call display? Bixby hit coms and a clock with pricing by the second popped up on his console display. It was Pander. He was wearing a sharp suit that contrasted with his face. Other people get a call from family. I get this guy for my victory lap. Just great.

  Bixby said, “What do you want? Keep it short. This one’s on the clock.”

  Pander said, “Excuse me?” Bixby didn’t know shunt lines could amplify egos. “I’m your most important call today.”

  “Is that so? Ellen just left here. I think she’s still in range. Why don’t I see if I can—”

  Pander stood up in challenge, inadvertently taking his face off camera so that Bixby was talking to his belly. Unfortunately, Bixby still heard him say, “You listen to me, you arrogant little shit. The only reason you have your precious little lab is me.”

  “Really? And how’s that?”

  “I told Ellen I’d cut her in.”

  “You—you what? What are you, a moron? They’ll kill us both.” Bixby couldn’t believe his ears. He checked behind him, thinking he heard his father’s footsteps—it certainly felt like he was near. Bixby focused, and said to Pander’s belly, “You should really sit down and explain that.”

  Pander must have seen himself on screen because he brushed off his quads and obliged. “It was the only way to get it done. Even in ops, I don’t have the flex resources to get a message to Laramy—that much Intrinsic attracts attention.”

  “So you did what? Decided to confess to Ellen, or did you just sell me out? It was your idea to begin with.”

  “I’m not selling anybody out.”

  “Then why are you calling?”

  “Because, shit-head. I heard back from Laramy. They want the headset tech—interface, implant, all of it. They’re ready to deal. You’d better be ready to deliver.”

  Chapter 8: Revealed

  “I won’t need to underscore how necessarily private this matter is,” said the bureaucrat over the shunt line. Bixby had the control room speakers turned up full blast—he wanted to continue tinkering with one of three headset prototypes during the call.

  Bixby said, “You mean keep my mouth shut—”

  Pander was also on the line. He said, “What our scientist means is that he understands. Tell him about the headset, Bi—I mean, Doctor Chasewbao.”

  Bixby put the headset aside and spoke directly into the mic, “Let’s just skip the dance steps and get straight to dessert, shall we?”

  Pander said, “What Doctor Chasewbao means is—”

  “What I mean is my name is Bixby. If Smeiser finds out what we’re doing, they will kill Pander and myself.” With that, Bixby knew Pander was cringing in a small cube at Smeiser headquarters—he had just outed both of their real names.

  The voice at Laramy said, “Pander? Well met. You’re expensive. Six months of calls buys me a name.” He sounded extremely in charge. Bixby sensed they were talking to someone high up.

  Pander’s lack of any response was Bixby’s cue to continue. He decided to test his luck. “Mister Laramy, if I may call you that, we have a pre-production prototype. I have some ideas that will likely get it working within three years, but there is also a chance it could fail.” He said it with finality. Bixby imagined Pander, muting in a panic, then forgetting to unmute, still shaking.

  There was a long silence. Pander said, “What he means is—”

  The voice said, “You may call me Constantin. I speak for Laramy. Definitively.”

  Constantin Laramy. Bixby had only been guessing when he addressed the voice by name. So they were talking to the top of the heap—an actual Laramy family member. Constantin was a son—he would inherit a major share of Laramy Orbital one day if he hadn’t already. Or so the voice was claiming.

  Pander said, “Yes, sir. Sir Constantin—I mean Sir Laramy—”

  Bixby said, “Mister Laramy, if I may. We’re running up one hell of a shunt line bill here. Smeiser tracks it internally and I’m running out of new ways to explain, so we had best conclude.” He chose his next words carefully. “We risk discovery otherwise.”

  Pander said, “Doctor Cha—Bixby means that we should communicate on shorter calls more often.”

  The voice of Constantin said, “We accept your terms. We will contact you when it’s next appropriate. No matter what you hear, keep in mind that I consider our deal done. We expect to have any prototype you deliver to Smeiser. Bixby, contact us if you make a breakthrough ahead of schedule. Laramy out.” He hung up.

  When Bixby was satisfied Constantin had actually left, he said to Pander, “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “You son of a bitch. Why did you give them my real name?”

  “I gave mine too.”

  “You stupid idiot. What happens if they leak it to someone at Smeiser? Did you think of that?”

  Bixby said, “You heard me say it,” and went back to his prototype. “We would be wise to get on a first name basis with him.”

  Pander said, “Answer the question.”

  “That was Constantin Laramy. He only gave us his name when I gave him ours. When you meet a bigger dog, you have to show him your neck to invite his trust.”

  “How do you know he’s not lying? And you still haven’t said what happens if he leaks it.”

  “He’s not lying. And he won’t leak it. That would kill any chance of him getting hold of any prototypes. I don’t think he’s lying about his identity. In all of our calls, he seems to have unlimited shunt line access and something about the way he talks—he’s used to being in charge…of everything. When he gave his name, I realized it was true.”

  “And when did you get so good at reading people? You’re just the technical guy.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m not a cyborg yet. It will be a few more years before this place eats my s
oul.”

  “You have nothing to complain about. You have your own lab. Don’t forget, it’s all because of me. Besides, you’re one to talk about souls. What do you have Niner doing out there? Are you forcing her to do menial work?”

  Bixby said, “Don’t talk about her.” Then he hung up.

  Chapter 9: Disputed

  The arbitrator stood. The crowd of representatives from Smeiser Spaceworks and Laramy Orbital gathered in two orderly columns behind small podiums with microphones. They had all practiced the formation in grade school. The special lineage required to become corporate directors ensured it—those who made the climb were armed with inaccessible educations.

  The podiums were made of wood—a spectacularly rare luxury this far out in space. All the trees were gone from Earth. Such an extreme display of wealth served as an unmistakable indication of judicial legitimacy.

  The arbitrator raised both hands and said to the chamber, “I am Cass Edgewise. As vested in me by the powers corporate, I declare this session open. Do you all swear?”

  “Aye,” murmured the crowd. Most of them appeared eager to get back to drinks at the main bar or a room with newfound acquaintances. Bixby knew those were available.

  Cass Edgewise said, “You may call me Casey. In fact, I insist.” He sat down and fired up his screens. “I’ve read the background. This is a case of patent infringement—Laramy Orbital accuses Smeiser Spaceworks.”

  A scantily-clad server appeared from a door behind the arbitrator’s bench, set a glass of wine and what looked like a traditional hamburger on his desk, and went back through the door. Cass sipped the wine and reviewed the screens as his audience waited.