by Jon Steele
“You’re a light mechanic.”
“I was promoted. I’m now head of AI.”
“Artificial Intelligence?”
“Yes.”
Harper returned his killing knife to its sheath. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you, sir. Shall we continue? It’s only one more floor, and we are on a schedule.”
“Sure.”
The man led Harper down the stairs to a narrow corridor hemmed in by a wall of gray cinder block. At the end of the corridor was a steel door; no locks, no doorknob. The man rapped his knuckles on the second cinder block right of the door, five up from the concrete floor. Taptap, taptap, taptap; tap, taptap, taptap, tap . . . the exact pattern of raps he’d used in the janitor’s closet. This time the dead soldier in Harper’s head identified it as Morse code: O-P-E-N S-E-S—
No bloody way.
—A-M-E.
Beep, thunk.
“This way if you please, sir.”
Maybe there were still a few surprises left in paradise after all, Harper thought.
“Cheers.”
It was a large square room with a low ceiling. Harper had to walk between the hanging lamps to avoid hitting his head, but it was a comfy arrangement for the small man in the white lab coat. The walls were made of the same cinder block as the corridor, but painted white. Like the concrete ceiling and floor; like the desk and chair in the middle of the room. On the table was a white box-shaped computer terminal. Next to it were a white keyboard and mouse, both attached to the computer by white cables. The computer’s nine-inch screen was greenish-blue, and there was a word scrolling across it, then dissolving and scrolling again.
hello
“What the hell is that?” Harper said.
“That? Why, that’s Blue Brain.”
“That’s four thousand quad-cores of supercomputer?”
“Oh, no. I’m afraid I didn’t get the opportunity to explain on the way down. This is an Apple computer, circa 1984. When it was originally manufactured it held only 128K of memory with a CPU of eight megahertz. Compared to a present-day cell phone, this computer is from the Stone Age.”
The small man pressed a button on an interior cinder block to close the steel door.
Beep, thunk.
Harper looked around the room, tried not to think about being underground.
“So where’s Blue Brain?”
“We’re not allowed to go near Blue Brain or interfere with its operations in any way. We’re only observing certain operations within its processors.”
“Certain operations.”
“Yes.”
Harper thought about the people he’d seen upstairs. “The locals working upstairs don’t know you’re down here, do they?”
“I’m sure they would find it most distressing.”
Harper looked at the thing from the digital Stone Age.
“And you’re observing their supercomputer with 128K of memory?”
“Not quite. You see, this particular Apple machine was modified by George Muret.”
The name popped hot.
“Astruc’s son, Goose. That’s his real name, yeah?”
“Indeed, sir.”
“He made this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So this is no ordinary piece of Stone Age junk.”
“No, sir. Inside, it’s a technological marvel. It surpasses anything our own technicians could fit in such a limited space.”
Harper imagined the misshapen kid, his small head at the end of a long neck leaning over a workbench as he wired bits together. Then he flashed meeting Astruc in Paris as Goose hid in the shadows.
“Don’t underestimate him,” Astruc tells him. “His IQ is above two hundred, along with having a photographic memory.”
Harper blinked, saw George Muret’s technological marvel staring at him.
hello
As the word dissolved, Harper felt a wave of vertigo. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Are you unwell, Mr. Harper?”
“No, I’m . . . Remind me, what’s the purpose of Blue Brain?”
“To map a single synapse of the human brain, sir. Like mapping the human genome, only a billion times more complicated.”
“And it is one of Inspector Gobet’s toys, yeah?”
“In a manner of speaking, as is all of EPFL. Inspector Gobet provides operational funding through third parties. But we don’t interfere with any of the operations, including Blue Brain. We are only observing the workings of the machine’s processors in response to triangulations introduced by Goose on the night of the comet.”
Harper stepped closer to the computer. “To find Earth’s exact position in the universe.”
“Yes.”
Harper leaned down, faced the screen.
hello
“So did Blue Brain figure out where we are yet?”
“Actually, it’s more of a matter of understanding where we are going.”
Harper stood and looked at the small man. “Sorry?”
The man removed his glasses. He blew on the lenses, then wiped them on the sleeve of his lab coat.
“Earth orbits the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour. Our solar system orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy at nearly five hundred thousand miles per hour. At the same time, our galaxy and our neighboring galaxies are racing through the universe at more than three hundred fifty miles per second. All this while the total mass of the universe is expanding away from us at forty-six miles per hour per megaparsec.”
“Per megaparsec.”
“Three million light-years in distance, sir, a little less than eighteen trillion miles. At two megaparsecs the universe expands from us at four hundred sixty miles per second. Given that the diameter of the observable universe is seven-point-two megaparsecs, the edge of the universe is expanding away from us at a speed of—”
“Pretty damn quick,” Harper said.
“Yes, sir.”
“So there’s a chance of what? We might be left behind?” Harper said with a smile.
The small man in the white coat did not respond to the joke.
Something buzzed under the desk. Harper stepped back, bent down, and saw a rack packed with flash drives. Green lights blinked happily.
“What’s that?”
“That is how we receive data from Blue Brain, sir. The data is downloaded onto the disc drives and brought here for processing.”
“You’re not physically connected to Blue Brain?”
“No, sir. That would be a violation of our operational protocols.”
Harper walked around the table. Two white coaxial cables were attached to the back of the Apple. One was coming from under the desk and labeled INPUT. The second cable, labeled OUTPUT, split into five, then ten, then fifteen, then fifty. The cables ran to connectors mounted in the opposite wall. He took seven steps and touched the wall; it vibrated. He leaned closer and heard an oscillating hum from the other side; two hundred forty hertz from the sound of it.
“What’s the kid’s computer connected to?”
“A DBXL-3 Data Compressor and an ATU-1 Extraordinary Optical Transmission Unit.”
“I have no idea what those things are.”
“Neither does anyone else without proper security clearance, sir. Suffice it to say the data harvest from Blue Brain is being relayed in real time to the antennae array at the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex.”
Harper looked over the setup. “Inspector Gobet does like his toys, doesn’t he?”
“In fact, the antennae array belongs to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States.”
“The Americans?”
“Yes, sir. Inspector Gobet has made arrangements to borrow it.”
“Borrow it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In the same way he’s borrowing Blue Brain?”
The small man remained quiet. Harper studied the man’s eyes.
“What’s your security
clearance?”
“Level eight.”
Harper was impressed. “That’s rather high. Tell me something . . .”
Vertigo nailed him again, then a crushing weight pressed down on his eternal being. He stumbled.
“Oh, bollocks.”
“Sir?”
Harper steadied himself, tried to laugh it off. “Must be all that racing through the universe at all those megaparsecs per second whilst standing still.”
The small man pulled the chair from the desk; he opened a drawer and removed an ashtray.
“Sir, would you care to sit down and have a puff of radiance? I was advised you have not been feeling yourself of late.”
“Bad news travels fast at level eight, does it?”
“We are doing everything we can, sir. To turn things around, I mean.”
Harper looked at the man’s eyes. They registered compassion; they also registered that the man knew the odds of turning things around were slipping fast.
“Cheers. I appreciate it.”
Harper rummaged through his coat for his smokes and matches. He lit up, sat down. He looked around the room again and waited for the pressure to ease.
“None of this makes sense. Well, some of it does, some of it doesn’t.”
“How can I assist you, sir?”
“This room, the cables and toys behind the wall. I get how Inspector Gobet’s boys could drop a time warp over this place and build all this with the locals being none the wiser. But what about that?” Harper said, nodding to the computer on the desk. “How did we get our hands on it?”
“It was found in a hidden workshop at Astruc’s base of operations on Rue Visconti. In Paris, sir.”
“The house in the sixth, from where I saw the comet.”
“Yes, sir.”
Harper looked at the computer.
“That doesn’t make sense, either. Astruc and Goose were barking mad killers, but they weren’t sloppy.”
“Sir?”
“They wouldn’t leave something like this lying about. The enemy was after them, we were after them.”
“In fact, sir, it was left on the workbench in plain sight.”
“You said it was in a hidden workshop.”
“Hidden in the sense that George Muret was hiding this particular computer from Father Astruc. With the computer, also, was a spiral notebook containing technical schematics and protocols necessary to receive data from Blue Brain plus all security codes required to transmit the data to the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex.”
Harper took a deep hit of radiance. He exhaled slowly.
“Are you telling me Goose was working with us, behind Astruc’s back?”
The small man did not answer.
“The kid left me in a hole with a rotting corpse for three days,” Harper said.
The man cleared his throat. “Regarding George Muret, I regret I am not authorized to comment further. From this point I am restricted to the purpose of his computer.”
As if hearing itself mentioned, the kid’s computer screen activated.
hello
“Why do I get the feeling it’s talking to me?” Harper said.
“To you, no.”
“Sorry?”
The small man opened the desk drawer again, this time removing a black-and-white photograph and setting it on the table. Harper looked at it. A laboratory; men in white coats gathered around what looked like a small satellite dish with mechanical arms. There was a time stamp in the lower right corner of the photograph: APRIL 17, 1977. Harper scanned the men in the photo. One of them had a round face and wore thick glasses; he was holding a gold disc in his hands.
“This is you,” Harper said.
“I was much younger then. Still in university, in fact, when selected to work on this project.”
“Selected. By Inspector Gobet.”
“It was when I chose to enter service to your kind, yes.”
Harper held up the photograph. “So what is this thing with the arms?”
“The space probe Voyager 1 as it was completed in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.”
Harper added it up. “The kid’s homemade computer is allowing Blue Brain to talk to a space probe?”
The man fell quiet again. Harper smoked, waited. The man wasn’t holding back this time. He was overcome with fervor in the presence of Harper’s kind. It happened sometimes, especially to the compassionate ones. It was called the “Angelic Effect” in the book of rules and regs. There were nine pages of strict must-do’s to deal with it. Sod it.
“What’s your name, mate?”
“Peabody, sir.”
“Doctor? Professor?”
“Professor.”
“Right. Professor Peabody, for starters, you don’t have to call me ‘sir.’”
“I could not presume to not—”
“Fine, call me ‘sir’ if you have to, but I need you to help me out.”
“Help?”
“Until the cathedral job I’d been in stasis since Easter Monday, 1917. Now, since I was reset in a new form, I’ve seen all sorts of things on my History Channel feed, from the physics of bell hum to Planck time. I’ve even seen human beings walking on the moon. But for some reason, a space probe named Voyager 1 never made the screen.”
The small man named Peabody was coming around but confused. “Sir?”
Harper held up the photograph. “I have no idea what this thing is.”
The small man realized what had happened and blushed.
“Oh, yes. Please, excuse me. Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 5, 1977, at precisely 12:56 Universal Time. It weighed seven hundred twenty-two kilograms and was powered by three radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs. Each RTG contained twenty-four plutonian-238 oxide spheres that generated slightly more than four hundred watts of power. Voyager 1’s mission was to gather rudimentary data as it passed through the Jovian and Saturnian systems. This mission was completed three years later, in 1980, but Voyager 1 continued to travel outward. To date it has traveled a distance of more than eleven billion miles. And as you and I sit in this room, the space probe is crossing the heliosphere.”
“And that would mean?”
“Voyager 1 broke free of our solar system a few years ago and is now sailing into interstellar space.”
Harper focused on the younger Professor Peabody in the photograph, saw him holding the gold disc as if it were something precious.
“Let me guess: It’s carrying a message that you and Inspector Gobet planted onboard, yeah?”
“Yes.”
Harper looked at the Apple computer made by the hand of a misshapen half-kind.
“A message that’s being updated by the data now spilling from Blue Brain.”
“That is correct, sir.”
Harper drew a heavy hit of radiance. “What’s the message?”
Peabody leaned forward, careful not to touch Harper. “If you would allow me.”
He tapped the space bar of the Apple keyboard. The screen flicked to life and a series of impossibly accurate triangulations between the comet’s trajectory, the ruins of Montségur, and a billion different stars cascaded down the screen. Harper flashed the night of the comet, on the roof in Paris. Him with Inspector Gobet’s computer geeks, watching a real-time mirror image of Goose’s hack into Blue Brain. The kid was building a cosmic clock, the geeks said. A clock that would . . . That would what?
“It is, sir, an SOS from your kind in the name of life on Earth.”
“To whom?”
“To whatever life-form there is waiting to receive it.”
SEVEN
i
It was nearly eleven-thirty at night when Oleg Kabulov finished his tea and rose from the small wooden table. He put on his greatcoat and trooper hat. He picked one more tea cake from the tin and ate it slowly. It was delicious, coated with the perfect amount of powdered sugar. His dear Svetlana baked the tea cakes each workday, as she had for
the last thirty-five years. She would arrange them in the same old tin and hand them to her husband as he left for Vladivostok train station in the late afternoon. Svetlana saw him off with the same joke each time.
“Smotri, chtob tebia transsibirskii ne pere’ehal.” Try not to get run over by the Trans-Siberian.
“Horosho.” Okay.
The clock on the wall chimed for eleven. He stepped outside the wooden shed that was the tapper’s hut and he locked the door. He put on his work gloves and picked up the long-handled steel hammer resting against the wall.
“Come, Kukushka, let’s go to work.”
He rested the hammer on his shoulder and crossed three lines of track to the service path running through the switching yard. The path was covered with ice, so he shuffled as much as he walked. He followed a long train of freight cars to the break in the line. An eight-axle freight locomotive sat thirty feet up the track but wasn’t backing up. Kabulov crossed carefully. Slip and bang your head on the rails, you could end up getting rolled over. It was one thing to die under the Trans-Siberian, but a freighter? Svetlana would wail for weeks in shame. He cleared the tracks.
“We have luck, Kukushka.”
Crossing through a set of switches, he met the main line. From here he could see the station terminus and boarding platforms. He stopped, scratched the top of his hat as if it were his head.
“Bozhe moi.”
He wondered if his clock in the tapper’s hut was wrong, or perhaps he had the wrong day. The high-speed Sapsan train to Moscow wasn’t at Platform One as it should be. In its place was a black P36 steam locomotive with a red snowplow and the red star of the Soviet Union mounted over the smokebox door.
“Holy Mother of God.”
Not that Kabulov minded not seeing the Sapsan. He hated that train. It was a train that did not need him. Its steel wheels were monitored by young men with handheld computers instead of hammers. He would have lost his job long ago, except so many foreign tourists had read guidebooks that mentioned “the quaint man who walked the length of the Trans-Siberian Express and back, tapping the wheels to check for cracks.” Foreign tourists paid a lot of money to make the seven-day trip across Siberia, and they expected a tapper to see them off, so the railway kept Kabulov on.
“Kukushka, do my eyes deceive me?”
Coming closer, Kabulov saw the locomotive was highly polished. The red star was blinding in the spotlights set around it. And though the streamlined side panels were black, they reflected the lights of the terminus like stars. The rails and pipes were red like the star; the main rods, side rods, and brake shoes were silver-colored; the steel wheels gleamed.
