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But she tried. He could tell, and she made a good job of empathy. Otherwise, they would not have stayed together this long. He would not be planning—hoping—to spend more years, maybe the rest of his life, with her.
Right now, though, today, he had to prove something to himself, and she did not “get that.”
He had everything he needed—laptop, transcripts, papers.
He took a last long drink of orange juice, gathered up his satchel, and headed out the door.
The morning was cool. He stood on the balcony, breathing in the crisp air, enjoying his excitement. Below, a car pulled up. The driver got out and looked up at him. “Mr.
Porter?” Bobby waved and descended the stairs. He climbed into the back seat. In seconds, the big car rolled out of the apartment complex.
Bobby watched the passing scenery, trying to relax. His pulse raced.
Part of him knew Deirdre was right. He should finish his degree, regardless of the perfidy of his advisor, and then worry about a job. He had been telling himself that no matter what Cyberdyne might offer, he would do exactly that, that this was an exercise in self-esteem, no more. But he was unconvinced by his own duplicity. Job. The word held so much importance to him, to his family. Having a good job was, for the Porters, the pinnacle of success.
Passing one up, for any reason, felt wrong.
Maybe they’ll offer an internship so I can finish my degree…
He was a prodigy. He knew that, though the knowledge did little to allay his insecurities. He was technically a junior, but his work placed him in an advanced degree program and accelerated him into graduate work in mathematics. It should have meant a secure future. But it had dropped him into a situation in which he felt trapped.
Somehow, his thesis advisor had figured out the scholarship scam and learned who he was. Bobby had feared discovery from the beginning, even though it had been remarkably easy to take over his vanished cousin’s life, who had been 142
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solitary and, apparently, friendless on campus. Not even the few teachers who had had the original in their classes had known him well enough to notice the switch. But Cojensis had worked it out—and had taken advantage of the situation. Deirdre wanted him to go to the dean. She had faith in the system. They would never kick him out, not with his work, his demonstrated ability. Bobby’s life produced a different view. While disciplinary action might be taken against Cojensis, the university would seek to minimize its own embarrassment and get rid of Bobby.
Authority never admitted failure. That he had successfully posed as a cousin and fooled the system for almost two years meant that the administration had failed to police its admissions. The evidence would have to go away. Deirdre’s stepfather owned his own company. She did not understand how life worked on the receiving end in cases like this. The peon, he knew, always paid, and in his own mind, try as he might to embrace Deirdre’s vision of him, he was a peon.
Too late now. He was on his way. The only thing he could do without embarrassment was to see it through.
An hour later, the car pulled into an industrial park.
Bobby watched ponderous brick, steel, and glass buildings pass, some bearing names, most just numbers. He realized then that he did not know exactly where he was. When they told him they would provide transportation, all thought of finding his way to the interview ended. He saw a street sign—El Segundo—and knew he was somewhere near Compton.
The car turned off the main road, into a small visitors’
parking lot next to a four-story building. Few other cars occupied spaces. The driver pulled into a space, shut the engine off, and came around to open Bobby’s door.
“Fourth floor, sir,” the driver said, indicating the entrance to the building. “Room 412. Mr. Casse is expecting you.”
Bobby looked up the wall of the building. “You’ll be here to take me back when I’m through?”
“Provisions have been made.”
The driver got back into his car.
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Bobby, his bones seeming to hum with uncertainly and anticipation, entered the building.
Room 412 was richly paneled and contained a desk on plush carpet, behind which sat an older man, brown-streaked white hair receding stylishly. He smiled as Bobby entered and stood.
“Mr. Casse?” Bobby asked.
“No, I’m Oscar Cruz,” the man said, extending a hand.
“Mr. Casse is waiting for you…Mr. Porter?”
“Yes, how do you do?” Bobby shook Cruz’s hand quickly.
“Robert Porter, is that right?” Cruz returned to his desk and picked up a sheet of paper. “You’re a Los Angelino.”
“Um…yes, sir.”
“Don’t be nervous, son. We’re not dentists. Now, what you’ll do is basically have a conversation with Mr. Casse.
We’re starting some new programs at Cyberdyne in the next few years and all that’s happening now is prep work. We’ve been interviewing students of exceptional potential, like yourself.”
“May I ask how you found out about me?”
“Grapevine, so to speak.” Cruz smiled brightly. “Not quite that simple. We have people who give us a heads up about talent and expertise. They talk to thesis advisors, deans, department chairs, instructors all over the country. It’s a complex relationship, but the whole purpose of it is to find those people who might find a future with Cyberdyne ideal.
For both of us. In your case, your advisor told us about you. He gave us a very promising report.”
“I see. So what position—”
Cruz raised a hand. “We don’t know yet. The position you may eventually hold with us may not even exist yet.
But you should discuss those details with Mr. Casse.” He pointed at Bobby’s satchel. “What did you bring?”
“Um…I wasn’t sure what might be required, so I have my laptop and a selection of papers, my transcripts—”
“Leave that all here. This will be entirely oral this time.”
Bobby reluctantly handed his bag over to Cruz, who set it on his desk, and, with a flourish, indicated the inner door.
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The next room was, if anything, plainer. A desk, two chairs, and a wall-mounted screen. Blinds over the single wide window let in narrow shafts of light. Bobby noticed still another door on the opposite side of the desk. A pair of tall steel filing cabinets stood like sentinels against the wall to his right.
“Mr. Porter,” Cruz said expansively, grinning, “may I introduce Mr. Casse, Cyberdyne’s director of special projects.”
The man behind the desk stood to his full height—Bobby guessed six-foot-three or four—a trace of a smile on his thin lips. His short hair was a solid dark gray, matching his wide-set eyes. Bobby’s stomach churned briefly and he felt a profound urge to turn and leave.
No time for nerves…
He made himself step up to the desk and offer a hand.
Mr. Casse hesitated, then grasped the hand lightly.
“How do you do, Mr. Porter,” Casse said. “Be seated, please, and we can begin.”
Bobby sat down. The chair was comfortable, at least. He waited while Casse studied something on the desk.
“I’ll, uh, be just out here,” Cruz said from the door. “If you need me, that is.”
“Very well, Oscar. Thank you.”
Bobby heard the door click shut. Finally, the director looked up.
“Impressive work, Mr. Porter. What do you hope to do with yourself after finishing your degree?”
“I haven’t decided. Good number-crunchers have a lot of possibilities. I thought about computer science, theoretical physics, logic.”
“Teaching?”
“That would always be a possibility.”
“A waste. You’d use yourself up trying to bring inferior intellects to an understanding they will never have.”
Bobby
stared at the man, startled.
“What I would like to do,” Casse continued, “is to have a dialogue. I would like to discuss some problems and ideas 145
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and in the course of our talk I will get a good estimate of your knowledge and talents. So in some ways this may seem like a thesis review.”
“Um…sure.”
“Excellent. Shall we begin?”
“Uh…”
Casse worked a keyboard on his desk. The wall screen winked on, a glowing milky white. Then an equation appeared:
“You recognize that?” Casse asked after a few moments.
“Yes, sir. Riemann. His statement expressing distance between two local points whose corresponding coordinates differ infinitesimally.”
“Very good, yes. Basic, I understand, for your level, but it’s a starting point.”
In quick succession, Casse took Bobby through a series of transformations that carried them from Riemannian geometry through Kaluza-Klein expressions of curved space-time, and into the abstruse corridors of Calabi-Yau shapes.
Ever more complex geometries, they concerned themselves with descriptions of higher-dimensional space-time, mostly hypothetical attempts to describe non-Euclidean manifolds, conditions pertaining in and around black holes or the theorized precincts of the primordial singularity, before the Big Bang. Bobby found himself enjoying the exchange.
Casse appeared to have a solid grasp of the principles and Bobby felt challenged to keep up. He had no idea where Casse was heading with all this, but Bobby was on familiar ground, having covered most of this in his own work on singularities and monopoles.
“Do you believe string theory?” Casse asked suddenly.
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“I…frankly, sir, I haven’t given it much thought. I mean, I know it a little, but it seems like a lot of hand waving to me.”
“Then let us see what you think of this.”
gHO = 1/ g1
Bobby thought for a moment. “That’s a statement of equivalence in Type I string theory. The first part is the Heterot-ic-O coupling constant—”
“Very good. Now.”
Bobby watched the equations scroll across the screen.
They were still in Calabi-Yau territory, the math describing more and more intricate curved space-time forms. He understood the link between Calabi-Yau and string theory, they fed on each other, but—
“Wait!” he said. “That’s…”
He recognized some of his own work integrated with the other, broader equations.
“These describe closed time-like loops,” he pointed out.
“You drawn an equivalence with M space models. But…”
“But?” Casse prodded.
“Instead of having the extra dimensions posited by string theory folded up inside Einsteinian space-time, you’ve got them wrapped around the outside, like coils. That suggests the universe is little more than a closed time-like loop within a larger dimensional matrix.”
Bobby became aware of Casse watching him intently.
“What does this suggest to you, Mr. Porter?” Casse asked.
Bobby shook his head. “Several things…I’m not sure which one you’re interested in.”
“What, for instance, does this suggest about the condition of our present universe? We have four dimensions, three material, one time.”
“Oh…well, according to this model, any of the coiled dimensions could sort of swap with any one or more of ours. It’s not required that it be…it’s not divergent. In some ways it’s recursive, so…”
He swallowed dryly, thinking about his struggle with the 147
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problem of monopoles. Some of these equations described the condition a monopole would have to exhibit in order to exist within a given field, like the universe as is. Both poles would still be present, but one wrapped around outside the other, so it would be a self-contained whole—not that it would possess only one pole, plus or minus, but only that one pole would be able to interact with the universe at large. What Bobby saw here was the idea that any given dimension would behave the same way, coiling up inside itself under the right conditions and taking on the aspects of a magnetic monopole. For instance, time…
“You have to replace it with something while it’s being swapped out,” Bobby mused aloud. “It’s only a virtual state, like a tunneling particle at the event horizon of a singularity. Mass is borrowed from the vacuum state, when energy is exchanged, but it’s not real until the mass of the singularity is increased and the exchange is made permanent.
So with a dimensional swap, the exchange would be temporary…infinitesimally so…unless the exchange is made permanent…”
“You do see.”
Bobby looked at Casse. The man stared at him now with an expression he could not read. Triumph? Satisfaction?
Casse stood.
“You seem to be the problem to my particular solution, Mr. Porter.” He flipped open a folder on his desk. “Mr.
Jeremiah Porter.”
Cruz went through Porter’s satchel nervously. He had never been a thief, even in his initial service to Skynet. Times required adaptability. He opened the laptop. Porter had it password locked. Damn. Cruz snapped the lid closed and turned to the folders.
I used to be able to follow this stuff, he thought as he scanned the pages of equations, interspersed by brief para-graphs of explanation. He still could decipher some of it, but time in prison, in isolation, had eroded his grasp of the more esoteric aspects. No question, though, the boy was 148
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good. Some of what Cruz saw now reminded him of Miles Dyson and Rosanna Monk.
He sighed. Dyson…a genius. Once he had worked with such talented people. Monk had been nearly Dyson’s equal.
No, that was unfair. Dyson actually had components from a destroyed terminator to work with, a nanochip and a hand/forearm assembly. Monk had been forced to duplicate Dyson’s work without direct access to those devices. Dyson may well have gotten as far as Monk without them, but there was no way to tell now. So who had been the greater mind?
Not that it mattered. Casse was pretty sharp—but limited in odd ways, not like the first TX-A.
Cruz tapped a finger against his lips. Actually, he decided, that one had not been so bright, either.
Why am I working for these things? Oh, right, Skynet, the destruction of humanity in the coming holocaust, the ascension of true intelligence, all that stuff. And besides, what else am I good for anymore? I couldn’t possibly hold a normal job.
He gazed at the papers, suddenly nostalgic for the past.
He forgot, often, what it felt like to work toward a new thing with bright, talented people. At times, in solitary, he had relived the days before Skynet, when he had been part of the mechanism that facilitated genius. Now—
“Oscar,” the intercom snapped.
“Yes, sir?”
“Come in here, Oscar,” Casse said. “We have him.”
Oscar sighed and opened the desk drawer. He removed a .9mm Glock and a spare magazine. Pity.
He dropped the magazine into his jacket pocket, picked up the pistol, and stood.
“Another sacrifice for the true future,” he said aloud.
The outer door opened and a man stood there.
Cruz frowned. “Who are you?”
“There they go.”
Paul Patterson started the car, and began following the 149
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dark car driving off with Bobby. Deirdre gnawed a thumb-nail, anxious and guilty. She hated doing this. Bobby’s paranoia had rubbed off on her over the last couple of years.
She was running on borrowed suspicion, but Deirdre had never been one to passively wait for trouble. Her father had raised her to be open, confrontational when necessary, and never ashamed of herself. Bobby, hiding behind a borrowed name and a stolen chance, could not afford that level of honesty. So he said, so
she accepted, but now she wondered if any level of duplicity, even in self-defense, ever paid a benefit.
Besides, she knew what a shit Al Cojensis could be. If she could prove half the things she knew about him she could get him fired, maybe even arrested. He was an academic leech, existing on the work of others, mainly his own students. Anything he set up Deirdre suspected automatically.
Patterson pulled onto the highway behind the car, keeping three or four cars back the whole way. Deirdre even felt guilty about him. She was asking a big favor, one he granted because he had certain hopes in her direction. If he had made the quid pro quo explicit, she would have found someone else or done this by herself. Patterson knew that, too, and agreed anyway, maybe to protect her, maybe out of loyalty to her stepfather—his employer—or because it was a matter of personal integrity. In a way, his doing this knowing nothing would ever come of it between them made her respect him more.
Dennis knows how to find them, she thought.
When they pulled into the industrial court, Patterson frowned deeply.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Probably nothing, but…” He fell silent.
She recognized the area from a field trip in high school to the old air force base. They were south of LAX. Patterson had dropped back even further when the car pulled onto El Segundo Blvd., then into the court.
“This isn’t Cyberdyne,” Deirdre said. “Is it?”
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Patterson shook his head. “No.”
She studied his face. “But you know what it is.”
“No…not exactly.” He frowned at her. “Just a coincidence.
Probably nothing.”
“You’ll tell me if it isn’t?”
“Sure…”
He rolled along, barely moving, until the turn-off. He stopped then. The Cyberdyne car had pulled up outside a four-story brick structure. Deirdre leaned forward anxiously.
The driver opened the passenger door to let Bobby out. They spoke briefly, then Bobby shouldered his bag and entered the building.
Patterson drove on. He turned down a narrow access between two stretches of chain-link fence topped by concer-tina wire. At the far end, it opened into a parking lot. Faint traces of space lines hinted at how long it had gone unused.
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