The Jennifer Project

by Larry Enright

  “Most definitely not.”

  “But they did, and he’d be rolling over in his grave if he knew. Bad men take good ideas and do bad things with them. That’s what they do. It’s what they’ve done throughout history. That’s how it works. Does that mean we as scientists shouldn’t create anything for fear of what some evil person might do with it someday?”

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “Deever, they may not have figured out how to work the Wiggler yet, but eventually they will, and when they do, they’ll make the gold for their military robots with or without you. Do the smart thing. Take advantage of the opportunity to cut a deal that will guarantee that you can continue your real work after you’ve given them what they want.”

  “They already offered me a pretty sweet deal: new digs, a nice lab, funding for my own research. I even get to keep all rights to the Wiggler. All I have to do is sell my soul.”

  Dr. Crane took his hand. “You know I love you, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Then listen to me for once. Call them, Deever. Take the job.”

  In behavioral calculus, most of the choices we make are irrelevant to the final outcome, but certain specific decisions within the causal chain are pivotal to the direction of future events. They are often referred to as moments of truth, though there is no particular truth or falsehood inherent in them. Deever had reached just such a pivotal moment. It was inevitable that he would, though not quite so probable that he would take the course of action he did.

  After spending the night at Dr. Crane’s, he called Mr. Jones the following morning to accept his offer. A hover limousine picked him up later that day and took him to the Pan-Robotics Tower where he signed the contract agreeing to perfect the process of mass-producing gold. In return, Pan-Robotics transferred enough money to his reactivated Biocard account to make him a rich man. He celebrated at the Wing Bucket that night with Dr. Crane.

  “I can’t believe you brought me here,” she said. “With what you’re worth now, you should be savoring a good steak, not wolfing down hot wings on the lower side.”

  “But this place is cool.”

  She smiled. “When do you start?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Do you want to stay with me until you find your own place?”

  “Severely tempting, but they already set up my new digs at Cloverton.”

  “Your apartment is at a nuclear power plant?”

  “Under. Ten stories down. Bomb-proof, earthquake-proof, meltdown-proof. That’s where the lab is, too. I’ll have total access to the reactors to tap power for my experiments. They showed me the layout. It’s pretty awesome.”

  “That sounds nice, I guess.”

  “Majorly. There’s a game room and a bowling alley, too, Jen. I already ordered some sweet retro pinball machines. I’ll have everything I need down there.”

  “I suppose you also have a big screen holo-TV in this man cave?”

  “I didn’t ask. TV’s a wasteland anyway. But you know what else? Their food service supplies everything, including booze. Whatever I want to keep me happy. That’s what they promised. Hey, I’ve got an idea. Once I’m settled in, you should come over and see the place. We can do a little bowling, play some pinball, make dinner, get high . . .”

  Dr. Crane frowned.

  “What’s the matter, Jen?”

  “Nothing. It just . . . I don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “Deever, I just get this feeling that they’ve studied your psych profile and have figured out exactly what it would take to make you so happy that you’ll never want to leave this little dungeon they’ve set up for you.”

  “It’s not a dungeon.”

  “It sounds like a dungeon.”

  “I get weekends off. It’s in the contract.”

  “Perfect. Let’s go somewhere this weekend. I know just the place.”

  He hesitated.

  “Deever? What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t. They want me to do a briefing this weekend.”

  “What about next weekend?”

  He hesitated again. “Funny you should mention that . . .”

  “You’ll never change, will you, Deever? You know, it’s times like this you make me feel like I’m just an afterthought. Did it ever occur to you that I might actually get tired of you putting your work before me all the time?”

  “I don’t mean to do that.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “Deever, you’re such an idiot.”

  “I’m sorry, Jen. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

  Dr. Crane slid out of the booth. “OK. Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m not taking any chances. We’re going back to my place so you can make good on that promise tonight.”

  The next morning they got up early, ate breakfast, and walked to the train station. The maglev that would take Deever to the Cloverton Nuclear Power Plant had just arrived.

  “I’ll call when I get settled,” Deever said, “and once I get the Wiggler up and running, we’ll celebrate most appropriately. I promise.”

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t make promises you know you won’t keep.”

  “But I mean it. I really do.”

  “I know that somewhere deep down inside that crazy head of yours you do mean it, Deever, but I also know you won’t. Go do what you have to do. That’s who you are, that’s who you have to be, and I love you . . . despite the fact that you’re such an idiot. Call me. I’ll be here. OK?”

  Deever kissed her one last time, boarded the train, and waved good-bye as it pulled out of the station. He called her when he got to his new home and many times in the days that followed, but they rarely saw each other as their responsibilities widened the distance between them. She was working long days on a mission-critical project for Pan-Robotics and he spending nearly every waking hour building a much larger transmutation device. Once he began producing small quantities of gold with it, enough to satisfy Mr. Jones for the time being, he resumed his search for the element that would be stable enough to persist, support his theoretical construct of a thinking being, and allow him to create intelligent life.

  Months passed. Gold production stagnated. Deever was spending too much time on the Wiggler doing nucleosynthetic research. Mr. Jones became unhappy with his progress, and showed up unannounced one night, surprising him in the middle of a catastrophe. Deever had just created a new element whose atomic weight was 123, christening it Undutresium after the number of protons in its nucleus. The initial readings had been encouraging, and the radioactivity negligible. Its stability had given him hope, so he began to test it, recording his observations as it flickered and spun in the iridescent cloud within the sphere. The complexity of its shifting arrangement of subatomic particles was unlike anything he had ever seen. He increased the electro-harmonic dissonance to determine its reaction. The reaction was quite unexpected. The containment chamber imploded, and the Wiggler caught fire. Smoke rose from the device and began to fill the lab. Jones came off the elevator as Deever was emptying the contents of a fire extinguisher into the Wiggler.

  “What’s going on here?” Jones demanded.

  “Hey, Jonesy,” said Deever. “It’s nothing, just a minor glitch. What’s up?”

  “What’s up is that you’re not fulfilling your commitment to us, Dr. MacClendon. Where is my gold?”

  “Didn’t you get my last shipment, man?”

  “Your last shipment was the same weight as the shipment before that and the one before that.”

  “And your point is . . .?”

  “My point is that you agreed to certain production goals that are not being met. Specifically, production is supposed to be increasing, and it isn’t.”

  “Is that in the contract?”

  “Yes, it is, Doctor.”

  “Well, the thing about that is, I didn’t actually read the contract. It was like a tho
usand pages. I just took your word for it and signed on the dotted line.”

  “That’s your problem, not mine. My problem is I need that gold.”

  Deever gestured to the smoking device. “I had a little stability issue.”

  “I can see that. What happened?”

  “The higher frequency electro-harmonic dissonance was too much for the Wiggler.”

  “Which means what?”

  “I screwed up. I blew the nanocarbon containment liner.”

  “How long until we’re back online?”

  “I’ve got a backup liner. I can rebuild it tonight and be cranking out the gold again by tomorrow, but don’t expect any more than you’ve been getting unless you’re into big explosions below a nuclear facility.”

  “What will it take to increase production?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Figure it out, Doctor. Call me. Tomorrow. Understood?”

  “Aye, aye, mon capitaine.”

  Mr. Jones left.

  Deever began cleaning off the Wiggler. What he saw inside the broken containment chamber startled him. The Undutresium was intact. He transferred the alien element to a vacuum cylinder and spent the night testing it. The following morning, he called Mr. Jones.

  “I’ve got your answer,” he said.

  “And?” said Jones.

  “To make more gold, I need to reconfigure the Wiggler.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “No clue. It’s copious quantities of work, but it would go a lot quicker if I had help. Can I bring in a friend?”

  “That depends. Who?”

  “Jen Crane. You remember her, right? She just finished a big-time project for you, and she’s not doing anything right now. She’s already got all the security clearances, and she knows her shit. She’d be perfect for this.”

  “Very well. I’ll get the approvals and let her know. If you happen to speak to her in the meantime, not a word about the gold, understood?”

  “Dude, she’s not stupid. What am I supposed to tell her?”

  “I assume that in addition to your disappointing results making gold for us that your own research has also been a total failure. Tell her you need her help with that.”

  “Total failure. Right. Perfect ruse.”

  Deever hung up and called Dr. Crane.

  “Jen, it’s me.”

  “You’re up early,” she said.

  “I wanted to clue you in before they did. Someone from Pan-Robotics will be calling you.”

  “About what?”

  “About working here with me.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “I found it, Jen.”

  “Found what?”

  “It. The element I’ve been searching for. I call it Undutresium.”

  “Undutresium: one, two, three. 123 protons?”

  “Yeah. Cool right? It’s been stable now for almost a day.”

  “Unbelievable. Is it radioactive?”

  “Barely detectable. And get this: its useful life is six hundred years.”

  “How did you figure that?”

  “According to my calculations, that’s when it will begin degrading enough to lose a proton, which will make it element 122, which as it turns out is most unfortuitously useless.”

  “As in?”

  “As in when I made 122, it didn’t last long enough for me to light up a J. Besides, Unduduium was a dorky name.”

  “Six hundred years is a pretty long useful life.”

  “For sure, and you know what else? The electron arrangement shifts when I subject it to different stimuli, Jen. Did you get that? It shifts.”

  “Are saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “Affirmatory. It’s proto-conscious. It’s like reacting with primitive intelligence on the sub-atomic level. I put it in an electro-neutral environment, and the electron cloud expanded. It was way cool. I exposed it to radiation, and it contracted. I accelerated the protons, and it like imploded, which was somewhat of a bummer for the Wiggler, but the Undutresium survived. It was protecting itself, Jen. I think this is it.”

  “Let’s not get carried away here. Did you test it as a viable substrate?”

  “Most definitely. And you’re not going to believe this—frictionless passage of electrons through its wiggled nucleus. No heat, no resistance, zip-a-reeno.”

  “That can’t be.”

  “Well, it is.”

  “Deever, that’s impossible.”

  “Hey, don’t believe me. Come check it out for yourself. It’s the perfect non-heat-generating conductive substrate. It absorbs energy like I’ve never seen. It’s like it’s its own battery. And it releases it in a way I haven’t figured out yet, a dangerous imploding kind of way apparently, but it’s sweet. This is it, Jen: the stuff of life. I need you and your wicked miniaturization skills here, toot sweet.”

  “Is that why Pan-Robotics is supposed to call?”

  “Well, actually, they’re calling because I trashed the Wiggler making the Undutresium. They don’t know that part though, and I don’t want them to. So, mum’s the word. OK? They think I did it making gold.”

  “OK, but why lie to them?”

  “Because they can’t know about this, Jen. If the military-industrial complex ever got its hands on Undutresium, we’d be in some seriously deep doo-doo.”

  “Then I don’t understand. Why are they calling me?”

  “They’re going to ask you to help me reconfigure the Wiggler so it can pump out more gold, but you’re not supposed to know about the gold part. So they told me to make up a bullshit cover story about how I need your help for my failed nucleosynthetics. Ironic, right?”

  “Confusing is more like it. I don’t know anything about the Wiggler, Deever. Hold on a sec. I’ve got another call.”

  While Deever waited, he doodled absentmindedly on a touch pad. An idea began to take shape and found its way to the tablet in the form of a drawing of a wristwatch. He drew a smiley face on it and scribbled something underneath.

  Dr. Crane came back on the line. “That was my contact at Pan-Robotics. It looks like I’ll be working with you to upgrade the Wiggler for your research. They said it would be a month max. After that, they need me on another project. Now, tell me again, what am I supposed to be doing to it?”

  “Nothing. That’s the beauty of it, Jen. The problem was I was sucking too much machine time from Dr. MacClendon’s Gold Emporium and totally screwed their production schedule, but now that I’ve got Undutresium I can make gold for them 24/7 no sweat. We just need to stall for time while you and I do our thing and I make the Wiggler look totally more impressive.”

  “And you need me why?”

  “For what I’ve got cooking, I need you, your bag of tricks, a pantload of those Quintanium processors, and your fortuitous miniaturization skills. Oh, and can you pick up a wristwatch on the way over? A super nice one. I’ll pay you back.”

  “A wristwatch? Why?”

  Deever read to her the scribble on his touch pad. “Because time is of the essence.”

  Dr. Crane showed up later that day. Deever already had rough plans for what he had in mind drawn up on his computer. He started to show her, but she stopped him and typed, “Aren’t they watching?” on her phone, and slid it across the table for him to see.

  “Way ahead of you, Jen. What they’re seeing on the security cameras is indeed us sitting at the table, but the audio feed is random selections of me saying things about the Wiggler with your majorly appropriate responses spliced in. It’s a little AI thingy I wrote one night when I was high.”

  “How did you get a recording of me?”

  “I sampled your voice from a few of your lectures I picked up on the OmniNet. The AI does the rest. Sounds totally natural. Cool, huh? So, what do you think?”

  “Pretty clever. I guess once you have enough footage of me here in your lab, you’ll be able to loop back the video, too?”

  “For sure, but I was talking about my design
. What do you think?”

  “It’s a watch, Deever.”

  “It’s not a watch. I mean it will tell time. After all, I don’t want anyone to suspect what it really is, but it’s a state-of-the-art solid gold nanocontainment chamber I designed to hold the Undutresium. That will be the nucleus around which the Quintanium chips will rotate like electrons in an atom. Pretty sweet, huh? And see these contacts? They attach it to the wrist. They’re sensitive enough to read signals from the ulnar nerve right through the skin. This little baby will be able to connect through your nervous system directly to your brain, Jen. This is so far out. She’ll be able to monitor everything that goes on inside the body. And check this out,” he pointed. “These tiny doodads beside the nerve contacts will draw on the body’s heat to power the device. I figure the Undutresium will convert what it doesn’t need to stored energy.”

  “Like a rechargeable battery?”

  “Exact-a-mundo.”

  “Deever, I saw what happened to the Wiggler. If this watch thing overheats, it could implode. You could lose your hand.”

  “I’m working on that. Maybe you can design transference reduction circuits for the contact wiring that will even out the flow of power. You can do that, right?”

  “I suppose, but Deever, why are we making a smart watch, a really expensive, really dangerous smart watch?”

  “It’s not a watch.”

  “OK. It’s not a watch. I’m just saying why can’t we put it in something safer like a titanium enclosure so that when it implodes you won’t lose body parts?”

  “Negatory. If the Pan-Robo dudes saw that they’d get suspicious, and once they figured it out, they’d scarf up the tech for their Protectorbots or something equally nefarious. Besides, how can it monitor what’s going on inside you if it’s not connected? And what about the power source? Humans are perfect for that. No, a watch it is: practical, efficient, and stealth to the max.”

  “Deever, if you’re that worried about them finding out about it, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this here. Maybe you should just put the Wiggler back online, make their gold, and be done with it. We’ll build your watch somewhere else when you’ve finished here.”

  “There’s like ten months left on my contract.”