The Quantum Brain: Maximum Speed (Pulse Science Fiction Series Book 4)

by John Freitas

  Thomas thought he saw an oil tanker sticking out from between a building bearing and bank sign. Fishing boats circled the artificial island. People were looking for their space and their place in the world. Some people were drawing closer together as they lost loved ones and property from the Pulse. Others separated themselves in the aftermath. He wondered which type represented the fishermen off of the trash islands in Lake Michigan.

  Thomas thought he had read that there had been a major fish die-off in the lakes after the Pulse. Not all species had handled the stir up as well as others. Those that landed far from the lake probably had not faired well, he imagined. Maybe the fishermen were casting out their nets and lines on hope more than results.

  “Maybe the world never made sense before the Pulse either,” Dr. Thomas Kell whispered at the window. “We just finally noticed.”

  The plane banked and swung south of the city, coming down on a runway formed out of a set of highways that were blocked on both ends. Thomas unloaded with the others. He found two of his bags missing out of the belly of the plane and sighed.

  The android looked at Dr. Kell with dimly glowing eyes in the morning sunshine. “Would you like to file a report with the airline?”

  Dr. Kell merely shook his head and carried the surviving bag with him. The airline probably wouldn’t exist in a couple months and his bags were probably already rifled through by the human supervisors at one of the other air fields.

  Thomas climbed up over a pile of brick and wandered along a dirt trail through tall grass. He reached the line of cars on the access road beyond the highway-turned-runway. A man in an unmarked sedan jumped out and opened the door for Dr. Kell. “Right here, sir. I’ll get you where you’re going. I charge Uber rates. Better than the droid taxis, sir.”

  The drivers standing by the marked taxis with their glowing eyes seemed unimpressed by the human’s banter. Thomas was tired and just wanted to go. He climbed into the human’s car and closed his eyes. By the time they reached his apartment, he realized he would have an hour before he had to get ready for work. Mr. Decker had been pretty clear that Thomas did not have the day off.

  The driver’s side closed and the man asked, “Where we headed, sir?”

  Thomas waited a beat and said, “Let’s make it the CDR Research Facility. Downtown.”

  After a stretch of silence, Dr. Kell met the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He read anger and betrayal in them. Thomas found himself wishing that he had taken one of the official taxis with an android driver.

  The driver said, “You work for CDR? Their soulless tin can factory put out enough robots to take every real taxi job in town. I’m having to Uber now like I’m some kid working my way through art school. I was a taxi driver. My father was a cab driver. And you’re one of the puppet masters churning out those bots like there is no consequence for those of us picking up the pieces after the Pulse?”

  Thomas cleared his throat. “No … I’m, ugh, a lobbyist working to limit the number of … um bots being sent out in the world. People’s rights. I just came in from Washington.”

  The tightness left the eyes and the driver pulled out of the line onto the street. “Let them have it for me. Blow the place up, if you have to. I’m just kidding about that last part. Don’t report me.”

  “I won’t,” Thomas said. Lying was getting to be a regular skill for him. He was using it more often than his training in quantum programming.

  “I’m going to have to take the long way around. There are a lot of closed roads between here and there. Construction and cleanup. Chicago got it bad on Pulse Day and in the floods after.”

  “I heard.”

  “I just didn’t want you to think that I was trying to run up the fare. There’s no direct route anymore is what I’m saying.”

  “I understand.”

  Dr. Kell’s eyes drifted closed and he snapped awake with a hand on his shoulder. Thomas pulled the strap of the bag to his chest. The driver let go of Thomas’s shoulder and leaned back up into the front seat again.

  The driver said, “You going to be able to stay awake through your meeting there, Mister? CDR is full of sharks. You’ve got to be alert.”

  “Thank you.” Dr. Kell pulled out his phone and clicked to pay the fare.

  The driver sighed. “Didn’t go through. Try again. Service is spotty in the city.”

  Thomas clicked again. The smile faded of the driver’s face. He looked up at Dr. Kell over the seat and said, “Dr. Thomas Kell of CDR Research? Yeah, the fare went through. Thank you. Get out of my car and have a good day, Dr. Frankenstein.”

  Thomas opened the door and climbed out on the curb. “Sorry.”

  “You are making people obsolete. Who’s going to buy all your robots when no one has jobs anymore?”

  Thomas looked toward the CDR building. He felt a temptation to break and run inside. Maybe he could hide in there and never come out into the world again, he thought.

  “There are tax subsidies on companies that use the androids. That money goes to people across the country in the form of aid,” Thomas said. “We’ve collected from foreign countries using the androids too.”

  “I guess I have nothing to worry about then with CDR and the government looking out for me, huh? Close my door before I decide to drive off with you still holding onto it.”

  The car zipped off as quickly as Thomas could close the door.

  He dragged himself into the building with the scanners identifying him and unlocking the doors and elevators ahead of him. The elevator took him to the floor with his office without him having to ask. Dr. Kell dropped his bag by his desk and fell face down on his couch.

  He was startled awake again by another touch on his shoulder. It was one of the lab assistants. She had red hair. Dr. Kell couldn’t seem to pull up her name in his foggy brain.

  She said, “Dr. Kell, I was told to come tell you that the body has arrived.”

  3

  “What body?” Dr. Thomas Kell sat up and rubbed at his face.

  “The body for the version 3.0 brain, Doctor. I was told to come get you.”

  Thomas Kell took to his feet and leaned on the wall above the couch in his office. He coughed once and rubbed his forehead before saying. “That brain is still a prototype. We didn’t finish testing the 2.0 models before we sent them out around the world. What are we doing now?”

  She cleared her throat and said, “Well, uh, I don’t know anything about that, Doctor. I was just supposed to come get you. I didn’t know you were sleeping. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine. Thank you. What time is it?”

  “Six AM, sir.”

  “Chicago time?”

  “Um, yes.”

  He pulled a white lab coat off the rack in his office and made his way down toward the labs without waiting on her. The doors opened as quickly as he was scanned from above, but he was moving with such haste that he found himself pushing past the opening doors and causing the motors to whine.

  The final lab required a complex code. Dr. Kell messed it up once to an angry buzz from the keypad. If he did it wrong again, he’d be locked out until someone reset the system for him. He tapped in the code again more deliberately and the lighting around the edges of the door turned green before the panels slid open revealing the lab beyond.

  Dr. Kell entered and stepped past the other technicians in the room until he reached the side of the doctor that worked under him. He was about to ask what was going on, but then he saw the brain floating and lit from within in the glass canister.

  Thomas swallowed on a dry throat and said, “What have you done, Jeffrey?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Dr. Kell. We’ve powered up version three at least a dozen times.”

  “It’s not connected to anything,” Dr. Kell waved his hand toward the canister.

  “It will be,” Jeffery said. He was younger than Thomas Kell and his hair was darker. Thomas suspected he himself was going gray from working for CDR. Jeffrey had bee
n with the Quantum Brain project since the beginning just like Thomas, but Jeffrey seemed to be aging just fine.

  Dr. Thomas Kell looked from the canister over to a box that looked distinctly like a coffin on a stretcher.

  “We’re connecting it to a body?”

  “That is the next step, Dr. Kell.”

  “Dr. Danver,” Thomas Kell took hold of Jeffrey Danver’s shoulder. “Stop and explain to me what is going on.”

  Jeffrey Danver turned to Thomas Kell and looked him up and down. “You look rough, Doctor. Have you been sleeping?”

  “I just flew in from Washington. I’m a little jetlagged. I need to know why we are going forward on this before the testing is done.”

  Jeffrey Danver shrugged and then took Thomas’s hand off his shoulder before he said, “Mr. Decker ordered it. He called while you both were in Washington. The body arrived this morning. He gave the green light right before I sent Susan to get you.”

  Susan was the intern’s name with the red hair. Thomas made a note to remember that.

  “Why was everything moved up?”

  “Same reason as before with version two.”

  Thomas closed his eyes and shook his head. “The Japanese?”

  “They are announcing an upgrade to their android models. Mr. Decker wants our new version ready to ship before the competition.”

  “We have to stop making our decisions based on what we think the Japanese will do,” Thomas said.

  “The business side of it is above my pay grade,” Jeffrey said. “We’ve been ordered to move up the testing and that’s what I’m doing.”

  “This is a bad idea.” Thomas shook his head. “We rushed out the version 2.0 androids before they were fully tested and now they are all over the world.”

  “Seems like a success story to me.” Jeffrey said. “No problems and they are rebuilding the world and serving as companions without incident.”

  Thomas sighed and said, “There have been some incidents. The androids are being used for security and crowd control. There are reports of people being hurt.”

  “Less often than with human police and far less deaths from police-civilian interactions,” Jeffrey said. “It’s in all our literature now, Dr. Kell. You should read it.”

  “I have, Jeffrey. Thank you,” Thomas said, “but it has only been a few months. It feels like longer because they were everywhere so fast. We haven’t even begun to explore what could go wrong.”

  “Our job is to create the technology,” Jeffrey said. “Others decide when and how to market it. They’ve decided it is time to move forward with version three.”

  Thomas shook his head again. “Japan only just released their first androids and they are little better than toys at this point. We overreacted in sending out version 2.0 as quickly as we did. We’re doing the same now.”

  Jeffery rolled his head around his neck and said, “You need to talk to Mr. Decker because he was clear that version 3.0 is going forward. Our military contracts are calling for it.”

  Thomas stared for a moment and then said, “This version is being tested for military applications?”

  “That’s right.”

  Thomas licked his lips and said, “I thought we were past that.”

  “Apparently not. These will be graded for operating fighters and conducting raids, among other things. We’ll also test them for serving as paramedics, surgeons, and advanced engineering work.”

  Thomas looked away. “We are not ready for this.”

  “Mr. Decker thinks otherwise and he writes the checks.”

  “We can’t give the brain access to the quantum,” Thomas whispered.

  “I know we had a close call before when the first Quantum Brain was stolen and destroyed, but we have better security than before,” Jeffrey said.

  Thomas blinked a few times. He reminded himself that he and Miles Decker were the only ones at CDR that knew the first Quantum Brain was out in the wind and more powerful than anything ever created. Maybe more powerful than anything in existence in the universe.

  “Right,” Thomas said. “Right. Has the impurity been introduced?”

  “Not yet.”

  “When were you going to do so?” Thomas asked.

  “I sent Susan to get you so that you could oversee that part yourself, Dr. Kell. Just as you instructed,” Jeffrey said.

  Thomas turned and faced the cooler on the opposite side of the lab from the canister and the body. “Shut down the brain, please.”

  “Dr. Kell, I don’t want any trouble with Mr. Decker. If you want to put off testing, you’ll need to take that up with him, but I’m of the opinion that you will not change his mind,” Jeffrey said.

  “I’m not putting it off and I’m not trying to talk Mr. Decker out of it.” Thomas Kell walked toward the cooler. “I just want to inject the impurity without the brain activated.”

  Jeffrey sighed. “As you wish.”

  He began the shutdown sequence and Thomas saw the light in the lab diminish. He opened the cooler and lifted out the hypo-injector. As Thomas turned with the impurity in his hands, Jeffery and two technicians lifted the canister off of the darkened brain. Thomas swallowed as he realized how little protection was between them and the newest version of the Quantum Brain.

  He rested the pad of the injector against the side of the artificial brain and allowed the impurity to flow into the object. It seemed so harmless sitting there on the pad deactivated, but Thomas reminded himself that without the impurity, these brains could see the future and had other powers they hadn’t even begun to understand.

  Thomas set the empty vial aside.

  “Should we reactivate it?” Jeffery asked.

  Thomas held up a hand. “Not yet. Let’s be sure the impurity has moved through the entire structure.”

  Jeffery leaned on the console. “The impurity is supposed to saturate the pathways in millions of the Josephson junctions in her brain instantaneously. It should limit her processing speed to around 20 megaqubits. What are you worried about, Dr. Kell?”

  “I just want to be sure, Dr. Danver. Please.”

  Jeffrey stood back up straight. “The newest version on the Quantum Brain is the closest to the first prototype we have created yet. We should have good results even with the impurity.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Thomas whispered.

  “What are you not telling me?” Jeffrey asked.

  Thomas blinked and looked away from the brain. “What do you mean?”

  “You and Mr. Decker. Is there something about the incident with the first brain that we are not being told. Why do we keep introducing impurities to slow down the processing power?”

  “Because it is the law,” Thomas said.

  “But why? Did something happen to make that law necessary beyond the brain being stolen in the first place? Is there something you are not telling me?”

  “There is a whole world of knowledge not being told to you, Dr. Danvers. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

  “Okay then.” Jeffrey shrugged. “May we turn it back on now, Dr. Kell?”

  “Let’s install it in the android body first, but disconnect body control for now,” Thomas said.

  Jeffrey tilted his head. “You want a paralyzed android, Doctor?”

  “I want to talk to the brain before I give it the strength of ten men,” Thomas said.

  “There are thousands of androids all around the city right now,” Jeffrey said, “with the strength of ten men or more. If you are worried about that, that ship has already sailed.”

  “But like you said, this brain is closer to the original. I just want to be sure,” Thomas said.

  “And that makes you afraid for reasons you won’t tell me,” Jeffrey said. He shook his head. “Okay. Open up the body, disconnect controls, and let’s install the 3.0 brain, everyone.”

  A few technicians began taking up their ordered tasks. Thomas walked over toward the coffin-like box as they lifted the lid off. He paused
over the body. It did not look ashen or dead the way a corpse would. This body looked asleep or pretending to be asleep. It was female and was already dressed is a silver jumpsuit. Her hair was chin length and blond almost to the point of being white.

  One of the technicians used a laser scalpel along forehead just below the hairline. Two men opened up the empty head and Thomas backed away. There was something too visceral about the sight even though he knew the body was artificial. The ultra-cold air in the form of white vapor was swirling down slowly from the open head. Other technicians approached and began running scans of the rest of the body.

  “Female,” Thomas said.

  “Yes,” Jeffrey said. “It’s just a personality and aesthetic choice. People respond differently to female voices. Certain careers for companions find owners more accepting of a female form. Childcare and other service work, for example. People seem more comfortable with female androids overall, according to the focus groups. I think some of the male forms were used for security in the first batches that went out and there is a psychological aversion now. As you said, there can be some negatives attached to those types of work with the civilian population.”

  “What is her serial number?” Thomas asked.

  “003,” Jeffrey said. “The first of batch 2. We’re calling her Pixie though.”

  “Pixie?” Thomas asked.

  “The name is just for this particular prototype. Marketing will come up with a name for the final, market version.”

  The technicians lowered the darkened brain into the open skull and began sealing the connections to the artificial nervous system.

  “Seems like we are focused on the wrong things,” Thomas said.

  “People usually are, but that’s business,” Jeffrey said.

  “Make sure body control is disconnected for now,” Thomas said.

  One of the technicians responded, “It is, sir. Just like you ordered.”