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

by John Freitas

  Humans realized how fragile they really were in the face of the forces of the universe and now they hid away on islands of trash, in refuge camps, or behind security doors guarded by androids. The survivors were willing to let the companions handle all the dangerous work while flesh and blood licked their wounds.

  Aside from the odd dusty neglect over their clothes and bodies, these security androids could look mostly human. Then, their eyes glowed with the dying battery light of their minds. They were all processing some electric thought below the potential of the quantum processing level. Maybe they were considering how hard they could strike Thomas for forgetting the elevator code. Thomas worried that caring for human life might be a higher level of thought and maybe the inhibitor was holding back their ability to really consider the value of life.

  “Human life is fragile,” he said.

  Thomas glanced over and saw the armed men at the desk still chatting with one another and ignoring the android army advancing on the elevator.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen.”

  They continued their conversation with nods and throaty laughs. Whatever world problems they were solving from leaning on the desk with their rifles on their backs, they were enjoying their work very much. The soulless bots shuffling forward on the scientist at the elevator was a show that didn’t interest them much at all. Supervising the android security had taken a backseat to whatever they were discussing to kill time during their shift. No one was watching the proceedings anymore and the androids were working on their own. Thomas was about to get a firsthand experience of what he had helped create with CDR. Maybe this was a fitting experience. Maybe he needed this to understand the stakes of what he was doing with generation 3.

  The front door opened and the human doorman walked through with his hand on the butt of his gun at his hip. Thomas wasn’t sure if the man was considering shooting the androids or if touching the gun was some reflex. Maybe it was a courage placebo.

  The doorman barked. “Hey. Hey? What gives? What’s the problem, guys?”

  The men at the desk paused again. They looked around and did a double take on the advancing androids with their dull glowing eyes. Everyone was processing too slow for Thomas’s liking.

  “Hold,” one of the men said.

  The androids stopped in an even curve between Thomas and the front doors. Their eyes returned to humanish tones and they stood waiting with disturbing calm.

  “What happened?” the doorman asked.

  Thomas coughed and blinked. He cocked a thumb over his shoulder at the elevator. “I … um … I forgot my code, I think.”

  The doorman stepped away from the entrance and slide between the threadbare shoulders of two of the security androids. He stepped around Thomas. “Sorry, sir. The code was changed yesterday to keep everyone safe. An e-mail should have gone out. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “I’ve been away on business. Things got away from me.” Thomas glanced back at the line of androids.

  Thomas watched as the doorman punched in the new code. The elevator lit up green and the man poked the call button, lighting it up for Thomas. “That should do it, Dr. Kell.”

  “Thank you … ugh … thank you.”

  The doorman nodded. “Anything else I can do for you, sir?”

  “Uh,” Thomas looked back. “Call them off.”

  The doorman laughed and said, “Of course, sir. Return.”

  The androids turned and walked back to their alcoves.

  “Thank you.” Thomas turned and watched the numbers above his head track the elevator down.

  “You guys need any coffee or a backrub before I go?” the doorman said. “I’d hate to trouble you guys what with you working so hard today.”

  “Easy,” one of the men said. “We’ve got this.”

  “Do you?” the doorman asked. “Because it feels like I’m handling inside business and out today, you know?”

  “No one is dead, buddy. That’s a job done just fine, huh?”

  The elevator dinged and Thomas dashed inside like he was taking cover. He turned around, holding on to the shallow metal railing behind him for support. Thomas thought that the railing was badly designed as his felt his palms sweating. It had narrow edges and it was so close to the walls of the elevator that if a person ever really needed it for support, it would serve little help.

  The door closed slower than Thomas liked. He watched the lobby, the armed guards leaning on their desk, and the android alcoves disappear. He felt safe again with the rickety doors of the elevator between him and the rest of the world – the world as it was after the Pulse. The CDR labs and his home were sanctuary vaults hidden behind doors.

  Thomas blinked on stinging sweat burning at his eyes. He leaned forward, still trying to hold on to the shallow railing. Thomas tapped and lit up the button for the seventh floor. The elevator jostled and then began to rise on its cables, feeling like the edges were barely holding in the lift box.

  “I should have put in a failsafe for myself with the androids like Mark did with us,” Thomas said. He grimaced at the thought that he was putting himself on a first name basis with the criminal that had set the Q1 brain loose in the world. Thomas swallowed on the acidic taste of bile in the back of his throat. He tried to remember if he had any antacids in the apartment. He had some in his desk drawer at his office in CDR HQ. Whether he had any or not, he had no intentions of heading out shopping tonight.

  The doors opened and he paced up the hall to his apartment. He fumbled with keys for all four locks and pushed inside before bolting them all back. The door was still made of wood, so if anyone wanted to get to him after reaching the seventh floor, the extra locks were not likely to stop them. Thomas appreciated the illusion though.

  He made it as far as the couch a few paces into the living space. He didn’t collapse, but he dropped to sitting. Mail piled up on the glass coffee table around magazines and coffee rings. He still hadn’t found his coasters since the Pulse. Most of the magazines were from before the Pulse too and the faces on the covers were smiling.

  Thomas looked up at the empty, black face of the flat screen. It was still strapped down with yellow nylon security bands. The top corners on both sides were blocked by the bands, but Thomas had gotten to where he hardly noticed even when he did watch TV which was rare. He knew he should unstrap them, but something stopped him. It felt like daring the universe to strike again. He was a scientist and he should know better, he knew, but he was also a scientist that tinkered with the quantum to create consciousness. Sometimes it all felt less like science and more like metaphysics or alchemy.

  Something clattered around the corner in the kitchen from the counter to the floor. Thomas’s veins frosted over on the inside. Someone in the kitchen cursed. For a second, he expected a band of disgruntled taxi drivers to step around with bats and tire irons.

  The one in front would say something like: Did you call for an Uber, Dr. Kell?

  The light in the kitchen flickered on and a single, long shadow spilled out across the floor. Thomas swallowed and called, “Hello?”

  A teenage girl with layered, dark hair stepped out instead of a grizzled taxi driver. She held up her hands and spread her hands. “What?”

  “You scared me,” Thomas said. “Are you fighting someone in there?”

  “I’m trying to make an omelet using these fake eggs you got in here,” she said. “I couldn’t figure out how to change your grocery order to get real eggs, so we just got more of these.”

  “If I let you change the order, Eve, there would be no vegetables and all junk food,” Thomas said.

  Eve rolled her eyes. “I’m the one that is here every night eating this stuff while you’re off pretending to save the world, you know.”

  “Sorry,” Thomas said. “It was a long trip and we have another big project entering beta testing.”

  “Wow, tell me nothing about it, Uncle Tommy, please.”

  Thomas nodded and smiled for what he though
t might be the first time all day – maybe for several days. His cheeks hurt like the muscles weren’t accustomed to the motion any longer. Thomas remembered laughing a lot when he and his older brother, Eve’s father Seth, had been kids. He thought maybe some of those memories were romanticized after all that had been lost.

  “You got it,” Thomas said, looking down at the mail trying to decide where to start.

  “Do you want an omelet too, Uncle Tommy?” Eve asked. He tried to hold back his enthusiasm. He never had children of his own, so now that he was in charge of taking care of his niece, he felt like he never knew how to connect with her. He did not want to blow this moment by acting like he was too excited to have her make him an omelet with his fake eggs.

  He took a deep breath and tried to play it cool. He realized he had never been cool in his life. Seth was the cool one and had always protected Thomas. Now Seth was gone and Eve was counting on the uncool brother to keep her safe. This was more pressure than lying to the Senate committee. He said, “Uh, sure, that would be divine.”

  Thomas looked up in time to see her roll her eyes. His heart dropped a little. Divine was too much. He should have gone with just great.

  She turned and walked back into the kitchen. “It would be better if we had real eggs and a side of bacon.”

  Thomas stood up and walked toward the entrance of the kitchen. She was pulling down pans and cut on the stove top. He stood in the doorway and said, “I’ll show you how to change the order and add on what you want … within reason.”

  She waved the spatula in a circle in the air above her head. “I am divine with reason. I’m using your precious vegetables and fancy cheese for the filling.”

  “Sounds divine,” Thomas said.

  She snorted and he managed his second smile of the day.

  “You didn’t come home last night,” she said as she poured oil into the pan.

  “I got in early this morning and went straight to the labs. I’ll spare you the boring details of my work.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “How was school today?”

  “I didn’t go.”

  Thomas stared at her back for a moment. He felt Seth’s spirit looking over his shoulder waiting for Thomas to handle this the way he was supposed to. Thomas licked his lips. He couldn’t just inject an inhibitor into her head to get her to stop skipping school. He wanted to get back to the quantum brains in his sterile lab. They were slightly more predictable than human teenage brains.

  “You need to go to school,” he said. “I’m trusting you to do what you are supposed to and I need to know that I can count on you for that.”

  She was still facing the stove, but looked back over her shoulder at him. “What are you talking about, Uncle Tommy?”

  “You need to attend school. That’s what … your parents would want for you.”

  “Oh.” She shook her head and turned back toward the stove. The oil sizzled as she added in the protein. “You pulled that card out, huh? Wow. I bet you’ve been holding on to that one for a while, Uncle Tommy.”

  “I’m serious about this, Eve.”

  “Stop,” she said as she dribbled shredded cheese over the eggs. “I didn’t skip school, Uncle Tommy.”

  “But you said …” Thomas shook his head.

  “School was canceled today.”

  “For what? What happened?”

  She shrugged without turning toward him. “Lice outbreak or something.”

  “Lice?” Thomas looked down at the floor. Something rang a bell. It was his final conversation with the first Quantum Brain. The Q1 hadn’t said lice, Thomas thought, but he did mention the Pulse disrupting biology. The next threat was going to come from those things that were set off balance and in motion from that incident. Diseases were spreading through a number of nations, including industrialized ones. Malaria had swept up through American South in the past month. Now lice in Chicago? Thomas was busy trying to rebuild from the last disaster. He wasn’t ready for the next disaster yet. Maybe not ever. “How bad was it?”

  She folded the omelet and flipped it showing a perfect browning on the under side. Maybe she was better adjusted than Thomas was. He could build a quantum brain, but he would burn water, he thought.

  She said, “Bad enough to cancel school. I’m clean. The nurse checked me and I checked myself just to be sure. I looked it up online to know what to look for. It’s a small school. They were afraid it would spread through. The public schools closed too a couple days earlier.”

  “Your school is a public school,” Thomas said.

  “A charter school with rich families,” she said. “I can smell privilege all over the place. It meets in a church.”

  “Schools are meeting in whatever buildings they can find,” Thomas said. “It’s not a religious school. They’re not trying to indoctrinate you.”

  “Speak for yourself,” she said as she plated the first omelet. “All schools are indoctrination.”

  Thomas sighed. “Yeah, technically, I guess. You want me to homeschool you? School online?”

  “No thanks,” she said as she added fresh oil to the pan. “Nothing personal, but if you become my only social outlet, I might be stunted for life.”

  “Oh, sure, Eve, that’s not personal at all.”

  She laughed. Thomas took a deep breath. Hearing her laugh felt like a huge victory. He needed a few more victories.

  She said, “I’m going to put extra vegetables in your omelet.”

  “Sounds good. Go light on the cheese.”

  “Not a chance. Don’t tell me how to cook in my restaurant. This is how my dad loved them.”

  Thomas felt a sting in the back of his throat and behind his eyes. She had not meant it to hurt, he knew. He missed his brother and his own parents. He couldn’t imagine what she was going through.

  He looked up and saw her head bowed as she faced the stove. Her motion had stopped.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. Her spatula went back to work again. “Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry, Eve.”

  “Did …” She paused as she salted the dish. He knew she was about to ask. He wondered if she was going to be able to get it out. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to keep it together through his answer. Thomas was tied up with CDR’s prep before and during the Pulse. He had called Seth in Arizona and told him to hunker down. He was out in the desert and should have been safe, but he tried to cross the country. Eve lived with her mother, his ex wife Ansley, in Iowa. It was too far for him to travel in time, but he tried anyway. His body was found in his smashed car in the traffic outside Wichita a week later. Eve was pulled out of the rubble of her neighborhood dehydrated, but unharmed. Her mother did not make it. Seth and Thomas’s mother had died from cancer years ago, but their father lived in assisted living in New York state. They locked down the facility, but things had gone badly with the structure. People were lost. Thomas’s father was still not accounted for, but he was not hopeful. Thomas could not shake the thought that if he hadn’t told Seth anything, his brother would be fine. Eve would still have one parent. He couldn’t have known that. Seth might have tried after seeing the news, but Thomas still wondered. She was going to ask and if she did, he would explain it all to her. She had a right to know.

  She finally said, “Did you want extra cilantro, Uncle Tommy?”

  He swallowed. “However you normally do it. I trust the chef.”

  She brought the plates to the counter and they ate standing up.

  “This is the best dinner omelet I’ve ever eaten,” Thomas said.

  She covered her mouth with her hand as she spoke with her mouth full. “It would be better with real eggs and bacon.”

  “I think it’s more than good enough,” he said.

  “I thought you trusted the chef, Uncle Tommy.”

  “You got me, Eve. I’ll show you how to access the shopping list.”

  “Do you have it encrypt
ed?” she asked. “I’m pretty good with computers and I have a lot of time on my hands up here in our ivory tower. I couldn’t get through it.”

  “Yeah, sorry. It’s a force of habit from work,” he said. “Do you mind if I use your laptop?”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “Anything I don’t want you to find is hidden well, believe me.”

  “I’m a quantum computer scientist,” Thomas said as he reached back and turned her computer around where it was plugged in on the short counter next to the refrigerator. “I’m pretty good with computers and codes too.”

  “Yes, but you are old,” she said.

  He swiped the mouse pad to clear a screensaver of a band he did not recognize. He didn’t know why anyone used screensavers anymore. He assumed it was just for show.

  “I’m younger than I feel,” he said as he opened a browser screen. Her e-mail was open in one of the tabs. He moved to close it. A message flashed with an important red exclamation point. He gritted his teeth and said, “Listen, I’m not snooping, but you have an e-mail marked important from … Adam. You want to take care of that?”

  “Never trust an old person that says he’s not snooping,” Eve said.

  “Your browser was open already,” Thomas said as he opened the site for the grocery order.

  “See what it says.”

  “The e-mail? What if it is a boy from school? I don’t want to read that,” Thomas said.

  “It’s a small school,” she said. “There’s no Adam. It’s probably spam. Just check it.”

  “If it is spam, why do you want me to check it?”

  “It could be someone from back home that I don’t remember.”

  Thomas swallowed once. She did not think of Chicago and his apartment as home. Her house was leveled and her parents were dead, but that was still home. What it used to be was still home – a place she could not get back to. Still, knowing she felt that way hurt a little. He hurt for her. She deserved better than leftover Uncle Tommy for a guardian.