The Diary of Professor Gilbert Rasher

by Kalifer Deil

progress has been made in bringing these criminals to justice. If we want to see a future in which androids and humans live in harmony, we must persist in moving the bar toward justice for all. In the past we did this for women, native populations, blacks, gays and many other minority groups. These were not easy battles either and many lives were lost. Androids are being killed daily and this must stop, but it won’t stop if we don’t stand up against those who promote these acts. Androids should be treated as equals under the law. I was sent to a junkyard to be compressed like a piece of garbage, by the police, without trial, or any rights whatsoever for murders that I didn't commit. I was saved from this fate by a blockade of the junkyard made of students of this esteemed institution.

  “The University can do many simple things to curtail future attacks. An example would be put concrete posts to keep vehicles away from these buildings. I have a list of other recommendation we can incorporate to make it much more difficult for criminals to harm these structures or those within.

  “I would be negligent not to mention that considerable money will go away. There may also be more money that will follow.

  “That's all I have to say for now. Do you have any questions?”

  Chairman: “That will be all. You will have our decision by day's end.”

  I left the room feeling negative; no questions were asked or even allowed. I had never been before the board and didn't know the Regents except general information I could find on the Web. These were people not interested in a Web presence; they were nearly Web anonymous.

  That evening I got a video call from the Chairman.

  Chairman: “You scraped by on a six to five vote. I didn't vote because my vote is generally used to break ties. Be warned that if there is another incident you will no longer be part of this campus.”

  “I guess that's the best I could hope for.”

  Chairman: “I'm sorry we can't support you beyond that. We have to answer to many voices.”

  I nodded agreement and said nothing. I knew the voices he was talking about. Some were violently anti-android. Others were hysterical over the danger to their children who were CMU students, even if they were on the other side of the campus.

  The Shaver needs a New Blade

  4.21.2128:

  I'm not too happy with the new building. The three story building is monolithic on the outside, windowless on three sides, and made with a new superstrong concrete. Such buildings invite wild speculation so I decided that there should be regular tours conducted as part of a public lecture series. Tours will keep the public informed and allow us to screen anyone coming into the building. On the inside, the building had a large atrium bringing light into all the inner offices.

  We were all moved in with two IBM NF84-12B computers and an automated brain slicer/stainer and a multibeam electron microscope. We were missing the diamond plated microtome blade. The company that made the original blade that we, the Finns and the Japanese were using had gone out of business. The company was based in Zurich, Switzerland. I decided to go there to determine what had happened. I couldn't get any information over the phone.

  I knew some German and some French so with a quick review I was ready to leave.

  4.23.2128:

  I arrived in Zurich and looked for the address of Mikrowerk Fabrik the company that made the microtome blades. The building housed four companies none of which were Mikrowerk Fabrik. I went into one of the offices and they told me they recently rented this quarter of the building. That Mikrowerk Fabrik used to be here but the owner died suddenly. I located the owner of the building and he gave me the address and phone number of the Mikrowerk Fabrik owner. I called and got the wife of the owner. After talking for a short while she invited me to stop by, so I drove over. I should have walked, it was only three blocks away.

  “Mrs. Albrect?”

  Mrs. Albrect: “You are Professor Rasher? You are much younger than I would have guessed.”

  “So are you.”

  Mrs. Albrect: “I am Karl's second wife. He called me his trophy wife as I'm 22 years younger than he was. I worked for him and made the blade before the diamond coating. The coating was his secret process and he never shared it with anyone, not even me.”

  “You've given me the worst possible news. You're saying the secret died with him.”

  Mrs. Albrect: “Not exactly. He left a coded notebook in his safe-deposit box. I think it may be the process if it can be decoded.”

  “I'm very good at decoding things. I would like to see what I can do with it.

  Mrs. Albrect: “You must understand. This book is all he left me. Not even this house belongs to me. He deeded the house to his son years ago.”

  “I can offer you a job in the CMU mechanical engineering lab and some cash.”

  Mrs. Albrect: “One million euros?”

  I laughed, “Now I understand why he called you his trophy wife. You're a gold digger.”

  Mrs. Albrect started crying, “I don't want to insult his memory by giving away his secrets. He felt this secret was worth millions.”

  “I apologize for my remark, but he must have made millions if you’re asking that price. Where did all the money go?”

  Mrs. Albrect: “Well he did make a million or so. He thought he could use this process for many things other than microtome blades but that didn't materialize. I'm not sure why.”

  “Not many people are willing to spend that kind of money on other cutting tools with diamond plating, especially ones that, if not used with great care, crack.”

  Mrs. Albrect: “He was trying to solve that problem but he died of a heart attack first.”

  “What happened to the equipment?”

  Mrs. Albrect: “I sold it off to pay bills.”

  “Do you have an inventory of the equipment you sold?”

  Mrs. Albrect: “The equipment was sold as a lot. No inventory was taken.”

  “That's also unfortunate. We might have been able to glean something from the equipment he used. How long did he take to make the coating?”

  Mrs. Albrect: “It took him a week. He would go into his room and not come out for a week. He looked like hell when he came out. I don't think he slept much.”

  “What was in his room?”

  Mrs. Albrect: “Custom equipment that he made himself. I don't know what it did.”

  “Was there a vacuum deposition chamber?”

  Mrs. Albrect: “I know what deposition chambers look like and it didn't look anything like that. Is there anything you can give me for the notebook?”

  “I might be able to break loose 100,000 euros.”

  Mrs. Albrect: “I'm rather desperate so I'll take it.”

  “I'm taking a chance, this might be just a recipe for zürigschnätzlats and rösti.”

  Mrs. Albrect laughed, “I doubt that; he didn't like either one. He liked Italian food.”

  I called the CMU controller to get permission to write the 100,000 euro check, took the notebook and returned home. She wasn't interested in leaving Switzerland so she rejected the job offer.

  I immediately set to work to crack the code in the notebook. I didn't have any luck so I ran the code through a program that tests a code to see whether it contains information. It provides a score. Purely random data produces a score of ten or below. This scored five indicating that this code contained no information. Something was strangely familiar about the numbers. With a little research, I found they were the least significant digit pairs from a table of logarithms. I had been conned out of 100,000 euros.

  I then contacted Professor Heikki Kosonen in Finland and he laughed so hard he dropped the phone. When he regained his composure he said, “Gill, we've both been conned. I paid 50,000 euros for the same notebook.”

  “Heikki, have you talked to Professor Tanaka in Japan?”

  Heikki: “No because I still was not sure that I was defrauded. I have only one blade left. What can we do about it?”

  “I’ll file a charge with the Swiss authoriti
es. You will need to do the same. I'll contact Tanaka next.”

  I waited until daybreak in Japan and contacted Professor Tanaka.

  Professor Tanaka: “Ah! Professor Rasher, you are android now, Yes?”

  “Yes, and you have undoubtedly heard of the trouble here at CMU. We have no microtome blades and the firm that made them is gone.”

  Professor Tanaka: “We did not know. We bought three blades. Can you locate person who made blade?”

  “I just returned from Switzerland and met with the widow of the blade maker. The secret of the process died with him. The widow defrauded me and Heikki into buying a notebook that presumably had the secret written in code. It contained nonsense numbers. I was thinking maybe we could make a trade of our technology for one of your blades. I came through our process 100% whole.”

  Professor Tanaka: “You have deal. We will send blade overnight.”

  I prepared a folder containing programs, schematics and all relevant literature on our entire automated process and emailed it to Tanaka.

  4.24.2128:

  The package from Professor Tanaka arrived and the blade was identical to the ones we had before so I gave it to Abe.

  “Abe, before we plug this into the system see if one of your people can figure out how this blade is made.”

  Abe: “We'll do the best we can nondestructively.”

  “Nondestructively is the operative word, there's no chance getting another.”

  Abe: “I'll make sure that's understood.”

  4.26.2128:

  Abe: “Gill, we were hoodwinked. The diamond isn't a crystalline coating as we were told, it is tetrahedral