Magic, Machines
and the Awakening of Danny Searle
By John McWilliams
Copyright © 2014 by John McWilliams
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
1
I awake as if a clap of thunder has jolted me from sleep. Heart racing, bathed in sweat, I sit up, trying to recall the world from which I have just emerged, but find only fragments: the morning sun through sheer drapes, the ionic smell of a passing storm, a warm hand clasped in mine. Danny? I pat the bed next to me—where is she?
The red numbers staring at me from the bedside table tell me it’s 5:42. I assume morning—it’s so dark. But what day is it? Where am I? A pang of fear surges through me before it all comes rushing back: I’m at Brook Howard University Hospital. We came here after the accident. Danny is here. She’s down the hall. Comatose.
Freeing my legs from the twisted sheets, I attempt to stand, my knees giving way the instant my feet touch the floor. What’s wrong with me? I fumble for the light.
Take a minute, I tell myself.
Lightheaded and still reeling from my dream, I try to mentally reassemble the tumult of the past couple of days.
We had been on our way to Kennedy Airport—and from there on to Chicago to present our groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence to the A.I. XPRIZE board—when our limo crashed. After a brief stay at Brooklyn Regional Hospital, we ended up here at Brook Howard University Hospital in Manhattan.
A special room was set up for Danny, and world-renowned neuroscientist Dr. Yuri Bourilkov was brought in. Yuri’s neurofeedback system was supposed to be the miracle machine that would bring Danny back to us. But so far, the only thing it’s done is tell us that there may not be enough brain activity—enough Danny—left to bring back.
I haven’t been able to contribute much. I’ve been studying the data from Danny’s neurological scans in hopes of finding something Yuri’s machine hasn’t, but I’m getting nowhere. I keep hearing Yuri’s voice in my head: “You will not get anything out of numbers that machine does not. Brain is clever, computer is faster.”
I attempt to stand. It’s still early and I’m thinking that maybe I can get in to see Danny before anyone else.
Somewhat drunkenly, I jog down the fifth-floor hallway to the control room. Through the observation window, I see that David is already there, reading to Danny. The morning nurse smiles at me as I enter.
“Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov?” I say, giving David a start. “I thought we were reading her The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I left it there on the foot of the bed.”
“I know. I just thought that since it’s a small book and you’re the one who started it, you might want to be the one who finishes it.”
“Oh…” Of course he has a reasonable explanation.
David Levinson is Danny’s husband—which may sound weird, since you might have (correctly) picked up on the vibe that Danny is more than just my friend. But believe me, weird doesn’t even come close.
David is a popular Las Vegas magician, and over the past year and a half, using a combination of money and charm, he’s managed to insinuate himself into our lives—mine and my father’s. Of course, he had a reason for this: Danny, he claims, isn’t exactly who we thought she was. But that crazy story is way too much to get into now. As David would say: “It’s complicated.”
David, for the record, is good-looking, tall, and has a prestidigitator’s grace that he couldn’t suppress if he tried. In fact, he’s doing it right now, in the elegant but natural gesture he uses to show me that The Hitchhiker's Guide is right there on the side table.
If only I could hate this man.
“One of the nurses found this in the West Building’s library,” he tells me, referring to his reading choice. “Probably not the cheeriest of selections. How about you take over while I go make us some coffee?”
David, typically not a hair out of place, not a tell in his eyes, is worried. He knows we’re losing Danny. We all know. It’s scary when the brave lose their fearless veneer.
“Did someone say coffee?” My father’s voice booms from the doorway. “Good morning, Danny.” He approaches her bedside, two books and a file folder under his arm.
Not a twitch of a response from Danny’s angelic face.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I need to steal David and Tyler away for just a short while. Rebecca”—he smiles at the nurse seated against one of the sterile, white walls—“will take good care of you.”
My father believes that not a single negative word should be uttered in front of Danny. If any of what we say is getting through to her, it must be positive. In a way, I think he’s been doing the same thing to David and me. He has to be losing faith in Yuri’s machine. (I know I am.) There hasn’t been a significant blip on that machine’s 3D brain map since we started scanning three days ago. Yet he continues to sound positive.
Three days? Or has it been four? I’ve been living on so little sleep, I’m not quite sure anymore.
In the kitchen, minutes later, my father informs David and me that, according to the Bourilkov System’s aggregate brain activity monitor, Danny is showing a three-point-two-percent downward trend. “It’s neurological atrophy,” he tells us. “And the more time that passes, the tougher it’ll be to bring her back.”
“How much time do we have?” I ask.
“Yuri estimates five to six days. We’ve optimized the hell out of his machine, but now that we see this decline, we see why we’re not getting anywhere.”
We look at each other.
“I can’t believe this is happening.” I take a deep breath and stare at the ceiling.
“You see nothing in the data?” my father asks, though he already knows the answer.
“Nothing,” I tell him.
He nods and walks off toward the coffeemaker. David follows.
I turn and head out into the hall. Not sure what else to do, I take the elevator up to the seventh-floor skywalk.
The skywalk is a glass-enclosed bridge that connects Brook Howard’s East and West Buildings. At the center of the two-hundred-foot tubular expanse, I gaze down at the hospital’s courtyard and its gold caduceus fountain.
The skywalk sways.
It’s soothing.
I sit down against the glass wall.
Danny, I don’t care how you came to be—if you really did just appear one day like some kind of illusion. The world is magic and you’ve proved that.
I just want you back.
I need you back.
I blink into the sunlight reflecting off one of the West Building’s windows. Something about the way it’s flickering reminds me of the sun winking through the trees along my father’s driveway.
A particular day comes to mind. A day, about eighteen months ago, when Danny showed up at Quantum Bay Labs and introduced us all to magic.
Real magic.
2
18 Months Earlier
“Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Harry Potter, that’s all you two ever talk about.” I reached between the
seats of my mother’s Lexus convertible and shook one of Tara’s saddle shoes, then one of Jasmine’s. My little sisters and I lived with my mother and were on our way to visit our father.
“Tyler?” Tara asked.
“Yes?”
“Why don’t you help Dad win his prize?”
“Because Dad’s an egomaniac.” Stones spat out from under our tires as I pulled a bit too aggressively onto the gravel drive. I glanced in the rearview mirror to see if the girls noticed. They hadn’t. The Long Island sun was dancing in their ebony hair, and their eyes were glued to the approaching gold Victorian mansion: “the Castle,” my father’s castle, complete with its own towering spire.
“What’s an egomaniac?” Jasmine asked.
I parked the car behind my father’s Jeep Cherokee and removed my sunglasses.
“It’s someone who thinks they’re better than everyone else.” I stared at the white clapboard building in front of me, just beyond the jeep, giving myself a moment before I’d have to face my father and his latest sales pitch.
“Dad’s lab-ba-tory can pay you twice what you can get at McDonalds,” Jasmine said. “Did you know that?”
“Jazzy…” I sighed. “Who told you to say that? Mom? Dad? You know what, what’s the difference?”
I helped them out of their car seats and placed them onto the planked walkway as gently as if I were setting down porcelain dolls, then I brushed off their white dresses.
“I’d work for McDonalds,” Tara said, big brown eyes full of heartwarming sincerity.
“Why is that?” I asked, taking both girls’ hands.
“So I could get free French fries.”
“That seems reasonable,” I said.
“I would work at J. C. Penney’s,” Jasmine said, “and get free clothes.”
“I don’t think they would give you—” I glanced up, certain I had seen movement in one of the spire’s windows. All I could see now, however, was blue sky reflected off glass.
“I would work at the Paradise Unicorn Ranch,” Tara went on.
“To get free unicorns?” I asked.
“Not free unicorns, free horses.” Tara giggled at my naïveté. “Unicorns are invisible. Everyone knows that.” The girls simultaneously let go of my hands and ran, their little black-and-white shoes click-clacking down the planks.
“Stop!” I called after them. “Whoever doesn’t stop is an instant muggle!”
They froze at the bottom of the porch steps, and just as they did, my father opened one of the grand, Italian, hand-carved wood doors.
“Greetings, Your Lordship,” I said.
“You know, Tyler, that wasn’t all that funny the first time you said it.”
My father was wearing khaki pants and a white button-down shirt, and had a blue quilt rolled up under his arm. “How are my little angels?” He stomped down the steps and handed off the quilt to me like a football. He picked up the girls, one in each arm.
“Tough flight?” I asked.
“Long,” he said. “Who wants to see the kittens?”
“We do!” the girls cheered.
“Listen. Shhh… Do you hear them?”
The girls looked in all directions before homing in on the latticework under the porch. They wriggled out of my father’s arms.
“Man, when they want to get down…”
“Mom calls it Child Chi,” I said.
“Yes, well, I just call it squirminess. Spread that quilt out for us, would you?” He turned his attention to the twins. “Now don’t scare them. How about you go over to the quilt and I bring them to you?”
“How are you going to get them?” Tara asked.
“By their necks,” I quipped.
“Don’t hurt them, Dad,” Tara said.
“I won’t.” My father glared at me.
The girls sat eagerly on the quilt as my father carried over the five kittens one at a time, the mother cat circling his legs, mewing.
“We should keep this one.” Tara held an orange kitten to her cheek. “He’s the fuzziest.”
“They don’t stay cute forever,” my father said. “Eventually, they’ll end up like this poor old cat.” He ran his hand over the mother cat’s arched back.
“She isn’t old, is she?” Jasmine looked at her sister as she patted the mother cat’s head.
“I’m just saying,” my father said. “They may not seem as cute when they get older.”
“You’re older,” Tara said.
“And am I cute?”
The girls looked at each other thoughtfully.
“You’re supposed to say yes!” He laughed. “Well, anyway, Tyler and I need to go over to the lab for a bit.” He looked toward the house and hollered, “Ish!”
A moment later, Ishana, my father’s girlfriend, appeared at the library’s bay window to the right of the cedar glider on the porch. All I could see of her through the window’s glare was her thick librarian glasses. She wore those all the time.
My father signaled that he wanted her to watch the girls. She held up an index finger, indicating that she’d be right out.
Ishana Singh possessed a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Delhi and now worked for my father at Cobalt National Laboratory, a federal research facility not too far from here.
“Dad?” Jasmine asked.
“Yes?”
“What’s the mother cat’s name?”
“Hobo. Hey,” he added quickly, noting their disapproving expressions, “I didn’t even know she was living under there until these little guys started squeaking.”
“Hobo’s not a very nice name,” Jasmine said. “Besides, she’s a girl.”
“A girl can’t be a hobo? All right then, you two name her.”
“You have to name her.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re her mother.” Tara and Jasmine giggled.
“What about Marigold?” I suggested. “She’s got a little orange in her, and you can call her Mary for short.”
“Marigold Cipriani,” Jasmine said, addressing the cat. “She likes it.”
“Wonderful.” My father tugged on my sleeve. “We’ll be back soon. And I’m not that cat’s mother.”
I waved to Ishana on the porch as my father and I walked toward the driveway and the white, windowless structure that housed his private business venture: Quantum Bay Labs.
Passing the house, I looked down the fallow backyard, out toward the greenish-gray waters of Quantuck Bay. That’s where the name Quantum Bay Labs came from. According to my parents, as a child I had mispronounced it as “quantum bay,” and, as the story goes, my father thought it was cool. Now, my childhood mis-utterance is printed in bold blue letters on every one of his business cards.
“Watch your step,” he told me, pointing to the cement slab at the foot of the lab’s entrance. He entered a security code, a bolt released, and the door opened.
“Nice.” On my last tour—two months earlier, right after the building was constructed—it had been padlocked.
“You might want to watch your step in here, too,” my father said. Scattered across the floor were boxes of books, file folders and electronic components. “We’re still getting this room cleaned up.” He kicked a box out of the way and opened the inner door. “Now feast your eyes on what you’ve been missing.”
“Dell computer boxes?”
“It helps if you actually step inside.”
Two twelve-foot instrumentation racks divided the main work area into three sections. The first section was empty except for the pile of Dell boxes. But the middle section had two workbenches equipped with high-powered stereo-zoom microscopes, a spectrum analyzer, logic analyzer, frequency counter, signal generators and two high-bandwidth oscilloscopes—and all of it high-end stuff: Olympus, Keithley, Fluke, Tektronix, SRS.
“Impressive,” I said.
“And the entire place is grounded—conductive mats.” He bounced the heel of his shoe off the black rubber matting. “
Over there is our break area.”
He pointed to the third section, on the other side of the far instrumentation rack, where an oak-laminate table and a half dozen folding chairs had been placed. A built-in counter ran along the far wall, supporting a microwave, a toaster oven, and a coffee pot, presently brewing.
“A lot nicer than Pine Grove,” I said, referring to the industrial park where he had kept Quantum Bay Labs housed for a number of years. That facility had been more of a storage area than a workplace, which meant that, up until now, the majority of Quantum Bay’s work had been performed either in “the Turret” (my father’s home office located in the spire) or at Cobalt National Laboratory where my parents both had their day jobs: my father as Director of the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Sciences, and my mother as a member of the senior staff in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics.
“Nice poster,” I said, moving into the center of the room.
On the back wall, opposite the break table, was an unpainted door. Next to that was a poster, a New Frontiers in Science poster—a circular collage depicting the public television show’s various hosts, each holding a prop from his or her respective field. My father, in the upper right-hand corner, was portrayed holding a Terminator-like robot head, a black-and-white mad scientist’s laboratory behind him. The caption read: “It is Alive!”
“I hate that thing,” he said dismissively. “Ishana put it up.”
“Is that your new office?” I pointed to the unpainted door.
“I have an office: the Turret. That’s for accounting and that sort of thing. Peter’s in there now, interviewing a candidate for our bookkeeping position.”
“Peter Landenberg? From Holstein’s STAR project?”
“Don’t worry; he’s not here to program. Listen, forget about him. Take a look at this.” My father led me over to one of the workbenches and turned on a microscope’s fiber-optic light. He adjusted the focus and let me look. I moved the eyepieces closer together and scanned the surface of some kind of integrated circuit.
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