Dr. Albert is honored to meet Dr. Tsun, because he has been studying the career of Dr. Tsun’s illustrious ancestor, Ts'ui Pên, who resigned a governorship to undertake two tasks. First, Ts'ui Pên claimed he would write a vast and intricate novel. Second, he said he would construct a vast and intricate labyrinth. Ts'ui Pên was murdered before completing his task, leaving behind a “contradictory jumble of irresolute drafts” and no sign of an actual labyrinth. He left behind a cryptic note: “I leave to several futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths.”
Now, Dr. Albert believes he has solved the mystery. The novel is the missing labyrinth. The novel describes the “garden of forking paths,” a universe in which all possible outcomes happen. The paths diverge with each choice we make and a new universe arises within which we experience the consequences and face still further choices.
Dr. Tsun sees his pursuers approaching and shoots Dr. Albert. Captured by the British authorities and hanged for espionage and murder, Dr. Tsun has nevertheless succeeded in his mission, for the newspapers tie his name to Albert – the village in northern France that hosts the artillery park. And so, despite the best efforts of the British, Dr. Tsun succeeds in communicating the location of the artillery park to the Germans.
The events of Borges’ tale seemed inspired by MacGuffin’s experience. The Chinese angle, the threat to Dr. Albert – a reference to the Albertians hosting and protecting Majorana? MacGuffin’s own manuscript… was that also a garden of forking paths, a “contradictory jumble of irresolute drafts?” And the physics… the many-worlds hypothesis was first proposed by Hugh Everitt in the 1950s. This “multiverse” idea only reached mainstream thinking in the 1970s. Yet an Argentine writer incorporated the notion in his 1941 story. Either Borges was as gifted a physicist as he was a writer, or he was profoundly influenced by MacGuffin and Majorana.
I knew Marlena was smart, but her intuition on the importance of this lead was almost spooky. We really needed to learn more about the Ordo Alberti. MacGuffin mentioned them in his manuscript, but that was more than sixty years ago. What was the Ordo Alberti doing today? Still rescuing scientists if their attempt to save Marlena was any indication. Where did they keep their scientists? What were they researching? Were they really trying to turn the World into a religious dictatorship, like Mr. Hung had claimed? I didn’t know, but Marlena’s suggestion had just given us another line of research that might answer these questions. I wrote up a summary of my findings and sent it off to Amit, Rob, and Marlena.
It was late. I needed to pack up, head home, and get some sleep. I had a busy day of IT grunt work ahead of me, not to mention a plan to devise to get myself to Jekyll Island.
Chapter 4: Where We Go One…
Instead of productive work, the next morning found me sitting in yet another mandatory orientation seminar.
“There’s no ‘I’ in teamwork,” Rachel opined. “We need to hire the right kind of people, people who can work together as a team. That’s why a big part of our job in HR is to screen out applicants with problematic viewpoints. We have many wonderful people at TAGS, but some of our nerds are, well, a bit quirky. They suffer from Asperger’s and autism. Our top priority is to make sure our people don’t find themselves exposed to toxic interpersonal interactions.”
The diversity seminar was a combination of social justice virtue signaling and exhortations to comply with social justice group-think.
“If we make the wrong hire, we could find ourselves in a position where someone is triggered daily by a coworker with an oppressive perspective,” Rachel spoke with genuine enthusiasm. “Social justice considerations aside, these negative interactions and micro-aggressions can cost the company lots of time and money from employees taking sick leave to recover from toxic workplace stress. Good HR not only helps build a just and equitable workplace, it makes good business sense, too! This proactive approach to employee satisfaction is rapidly becoming the industry norm, and we’re glad to be leading the way!”
I’d heard it all before, of course, but it was interesting how Rachel twisted it around to make Human Resources in general, and herself in particular, the heroic champion of the oppressed and the arbiter of social justice. I spent my time reading through the company Employee Handbook and the even less fascinating Tolliver Corporation Safety Manual.
Mr. Humphreys was not happy when I handed the helpline cellphone back to him first thing that morning. “I’m supposed to be in a polygraph exam to finalize my clearance,” I explained.
He still didn’t like it.
“The polygraph examiner isn’t going to want me answering calls in the middle of the exam,” I pointed out.
He finally bowed to the inevitable.
My polygraph exam was right before lunch. Uncle Rob made a much more intimidating interrogator than the bureaucrat who questioned me. My exam began with a magic card trick and the interrogator using the lie detector to demonstrate how he could tell when I lied about the card he’d forced me to choose. I tried to look impressed and willed myself to a high state of anxiety as he went through the control questions. Then, I relaxed as he questioned me about my trustworthiness and my background. I was calm and confident I’d passed with flying colors.
“I see some indications of deception here,” my interrogator explained.
“How so?” I wondered which question raised a red flag with him.
“Is there anything else you need to tell me?”
No particular question? Did he actually have a concern, or was he just fishing? I pretended to think intently and slowly began to shake my head. “No, sir. I can’t think of anything else relevant.”
The interrogator glared at me. “I’m going to have to schedule you for a follow-up session tomorrow afternoon.” He wrote the time on a slip of paper. “Remember: your exam is confidential, so don’t be discussing it with anyone.”
“Yes, sir.” Then I did the math. There were just six of us interns going through the clearance process. The interview was about an hour long. The interrogator was conducting a follow-up session with me tomorrow instead of fitting me in later today? I had a feeling everyone’s initial interrogations were “inconclusive” and we’d all have to come back for another hour-long session tomorrow. Since we weren’t supposed to talk about it, we wouldn’t be comparing notes. It was all just another trick to increase the pressure and convince us to divulge any incriminating personal information – if we thought he was on to us, we may as well ‘fess up. The realization that the follow-up interrogation was another trick made me feel better.
I recovered the helpline cell phone from Mr. Humphreys. I wanted to ask him what to do about the toner cartridges, but he was heading out for lunch. I finished my bag lunch and got to work on the rest of my toner list. It was clear that the printers were crying wolf. I got out a postal scale and measured the weight of some new cartridges to establish a baseline. Then I weighed the cartridges in the recycle bin. They were lighter, but varied all over the place. I took one of the lighter cartridges, loaded up the printer down the hall with paper from the recycle bin, and ran the cartridge dry. Good thing I used paper from the recycle bin – I went through a sizeable stack. That gave me an empty cartridge to weigh, and a decent estimate of pages per toner cartridge.
I took the page counts I’d pulled from the printers the previous day, and the pages per toner cartridge estimate I’d just derived, and I calculated an estimate for toner cartridges used. Maybe Mr. Humphreys could help me track down how many toner cartridges the company ordered?
Somehow he’d gotten back from lunch. His door sign indicated he was back on site, and if he was needed, to call… the helpline cell phone number.
This was really getting annoying. I suppose I could have called him, but I didn’t want to annoy him if he was “busy” playing hooky somewhere.
I wrote up my toner results. I figured the company could save a couple thousand dollars per year by waiting for cartridges to actually run out, instead of replacing them whe
never the printer sent out a low toner alert. By the time I was done and had emailed my results, I had an hour left, and Mr. Humphreys was still a no-show.
I had an hour left and had completely run out of anything productive to do. I used my administrative privileges to look for any documents on the file server relevant to the company’s Civic Circle contract supporting the Social Justice Leadership Forum on Jekyll Island. There it was. I got the Request for Quote, TAGS’ Quotation, and the Purchase Order. The most interesting information was stored in Travis Tolliver’s personal folder.
The Civic Circle had ordered a state-of-the-art file server with many terabytes of capacity. TAGS itself only needed a couple terabytes for a complete backup. The “data vault” project was only part of the overall effort. The Civic Circle also wanted TAGS to update the IT infrastructure all over Jekyll Island – the Jekyll Club Hotel, a large number of historic cottages, even a couple of hotels. Everything was to be coordinated through a secure data center in the basement of the Jekyll Club Hotel. The plan called for Mr. Humphreys and a couple of TAGS’ network engineers to supervise the final acceptance of the system from a contractor who’d be doing the bulk of the installation. Additional “special services” of an undefined nature were also on the invoice. It didn’t look as though there was much need for a junior assistant like me on the project.
The installation plans and network design had already been completed by yet another contractor. I resisted the temptation to look up “Delta Data Design.” Their logo was a distinctive triangular spiral. I made a mental note to track them down later.
By that time, I’d put in my eight hours at TAGS. Somehow, Mr. Humphreys had slipped out behind me without my noticing. The sign on his door now read “Heading Home, But Always on Call.” Of course, the number was for the helpline cell phone I was carrying.
I’d been considering another round of wardriving when a text from Amit made it required instead of optional. He texted how “really exciting” his new job was. That was the code we agreed upon for “unable to communicate through secure channels.” I sure hoped he wasn’t busy entertaining some new lady friends, because it meant I had to take over running Virtual Reka for him.
I turned off the helpline cell phone and left it at home. No sense letting it track me around. I figured if Mr. Humphreys had any complaints, I’d tell him I didn’t know if I was authorized to work overtime. One microwaved leftover spaghetti dinner later, and I was on the road. This time, I headed west into the neighboring city of Madison. I found a McDonalds with WiFi. It was slow, but since the TOR connection I was using for anonymity was even slower, I figured it wouldn’t matter.
Virtual Reka’s bulging “Sapiosexual Gal” inbox was an eye-opener. There were guys wanting to fly Reka out for romantic weekends. One offered up his private jet! Hardly any of them said anything to indicate they actually read her listing. With her supermodel looks, I guess not many guys cared. And do girls actually swoon over guys who send them pictures of their… Anyway, it took me nearly an hour sorting through the messages before I realized there was a search box. I got a hit on “Rousseau2k,” Gomulka’s user name on the site.
Gomulka’s note made me feel even more sympathy for what girls put up with. His message was cringe worthy: part begging for attention, part bragging about his intellectual achievements, his professorship at Georgia Tech, and his importance as “an architect of the coming social order.”
Sigh.
And now I had to write back to him.
I put on my Virtual Reka thinking cap.
“Wow, Rousseau2k! You are real professor who teach next generation social justice? How rewarding that is to you! You are brave man to share with me your real identity, too! My real name is Reka Kozma. I move to US in a few months and live in Atlanta for exciting modeling job. I sure you have pick of college girls you teach, but if you have time, I love to meet you when I get there. It makes me feel all warm know you be there in US, and I might meet you there. Love and Kisses, Reka.”
That ought to do the trick.
I figured some extra security wouldn’t hurt, so I reset the connection. Once I was back online, I reconnected through TOR to one of Amit’s hotels, and through TOR again to a server we’d been using as a drop point. Rob had left a note for me. He thought Amit was fine, but perhaps under scrutiny as he was starting up his new internship for the Civic Circle. He also said he’d be coming through Huntsville on his way to meet Marlena’s mom. Sarah, one of the students who’d worked for Marlena, had come through for us. She’d been watching Marlena’s apartment and looking after her cat. She’d also been a “Friend of George,” part of the FOG – the anonymous group who’d banded together in the name of Georgia Tech’s most famous (if fictional) alum to defend the school from the Civic Circle’s attempted takeover. “George P. Burdell” had arranged with Sarah for her to take the cat to Marlena’s mom, along with a few items Marlena most wanted. Rob would be passing through to make the pickup – handing off a note from Marlena to her mom and retrieving Marlena’s cat, laptop, and other property. Rob also said we’d talk about why he didn’t tell me in advance he had me under surveillance when I met the Tong. Good. I sent him details on a good rendezvous location.
Marlena sent a polite note thanking me for the information on Borges and asking for anything else I could find on him. She didn’t say “I told you so,” but the subtext was there.
Finally, I searched on Delta Data Designs. They were a part of Delta Designs, “Architects to the Stars,” their website proclaimed. Their practice ranged from Hollywood to the Hamptons, and they had a who’s who of impressive clientele from media, finance, and politics. “Discreet and Secure,” they trumpeted their expertise in safe rooms, video surveillance, and the highest possible level of residential security.
The news items I found told a different story, though. “Plane Crash Kills Architect, Partners,” it proclaimed. The principals in the company all died in a plane crash last fall, along with a half dozen senior members of the firm. They’d been heading back from a job at a client’s residence on a private Caribbean island when their plane went down without a trace. “The Bermuda Triangle,” speculated one article. I suspected more mundane culprits.
I began to see how TAGS ended up the contractor on the Jekyll Island job. In ancient times, kings blinded their architects to keep their secrets and so that no one else could have a palace of the same splendor. Apparently unexplained plane crashes were the modern method of choice. I wondered what secrets the “Architects to the Stars” took to their watery graves. Knowing too many of the wrong people’s secrets drastically shortened your life expectancy.
With Larry’s efforts to raise Tolliver Corporation’s profile among the Civic Circle, TAGS was in a great position to move on up and replace Delta Designs. I could only hope that this one job wouldn’t expose us all to so many secrets that we met the same fate as the Delta Designs team. What was the cost-benefit tradeoff? Surely they couldn’t kill all the contractors after every job? Talk about making it hard to find good help! Since TAGS was just starting out, we’d probably be fine. I was glad I was only a short-term intern and not working for TAGS full time until my access to secrets caught up to me.
I wrote up my notes and left them on the server for the rest of the team. On my way back to my apartment, I swung by a book store, and I paid cash for a couple collections of Jorge Luis Borges’ short stories to read.
It was clear we had the right guy.
“The Book of Sand,” was the title of one of his short stories in which a Scotch Presbyterian antiquarian and Bible seller traded the titular book to Borges – a book without beginning and without end. A book with seemingly infinite pages and endless content. “Affirming a fantastic tale’s truth is now a story-telling convention; mine, though, is true,” Borges proclaimed. Consumed by the book, Borges forced himself to be rid of it, hiding it in the dusty stacks in the basement of the Argentine National Library on Mexico Street in Buenos Aires where he once work
ed.
In another essay, “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins,” Borges described a taxonomy of animals allegedly taken from an “ancient Chinese encyclopedia” entitled “Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge.” The list divided all animals into fourteen categories:
Those that belong to the emperor
Embalmed ones
Those that are trained
Suckling pigs
Mermaids (or Sirens)
Fabulous ones
Stray dogs
Those that are included in this classification
Those that tremble as if they were mad
Innumerable ones
Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
Et cetera
Those that have just broken the flower vase
Those that, at a distance, resemble flies
I had to chuckle, because Borges’ parody captured exactly the spirit of MacGuffin’s own often-confusing translations of his ancient Chinese sources.
Borges’ “Scotch Presbyterian” who found “The Book of Sand” may have been from the Orkneys instead of from Appalachia, but I was convinced to a certainty that Borges had met MacGuffin. His stories were peppered with elements drawn from or clearly inspired by their relationship. Was another copy of MacGuffin’s manuscript actually buried in a library in Argentina?
It was late. Tomorrow I’d pass on my new discovery to Marlena and the gang.
* * *
I finally caught Mr. Humphreys at his desk. He greeted me cheerfully. “What the hell do you want?”
“When I have the helpline phone overnight and I need to answer a call, I may have to work overtime. Is that OK?”
He gave me a look like I was trying to cheat the company.
The Brave and the Bold Page 8
