Jintao Read online

  “I take it you haven’t been back to the island since then.”

  “That’s correct.”

  Quan rose from the desk and moved toward the door. “I understand the scientific value, but first and foremost I want to find out what happened to my father.”

  “I understand and I’ll help in any way I can.” Von Ang stood up, slid his heels together and extended his hand.

  “I need to go there—to the island,” said Quan. “I need to see what’s there and I want you to take me. Are you checked out on a glide?”

  Von Ang’s eyes widened. “Yes, of course. I’m instrument rated.”

  “Good. We’ll want to go the island undetected.”

  Dr. von Ang left the room and Quan was alone again, sitting behind his father’s desk, a two-meter-wide, highly polished black slab, floating a meter above the floor with no visible means of support. He leaned back and closed his eyes, visualizing his father working with the young scientist. His father often said, “State the problem clearly and the answer will appear.” It was mind-bending to think that the theory might actually be true—that matter was essentially made of nothing more than vibrating energy and moments of probability. Quan imagined the chair underneath him, winking in and out of existence so fast that it might seem solid, but perhaps nothing but empty space.

  If Krakinov was right, matter doesn’t exist at all. Things only have a “potentiality” in space-time. Zillions of particles, intermittently here, and then not . . . yet enough of them here at any given moment to give the illusion of matter. But if the theory is wrong, then what is that machine doing?

  Quan reached for the stylus and rolled it back and forth on the desktop. He was feeling somewhat intimidated by the scope of what he had just learned, and yet excitement stirred within him. It was possible that his father was on the verge of a great discovery and he was about to join the mission.

  8.

  Ning set plates in front of the young couple and poured wine for each, then withdrew to another part of the house. The wine was an especially good Cabernet, scented with blackberries and French oak. The entrée was sea bass drenched in orange beurre blanc sauce, complemented by a puree of cauliflower molded in the shape of a lotus blossom.

  “Delicious,” said Sealy earnestly. “I can barely tell the difference between NutriSynth and the real thing.”

  “You sound like a commercial,” said Quan.

  “Very funny,” said Sealy, sipping her wine. “So, you went to the corporation today. Tell me what you learned. Any news about your father?”

  “I met with someone who worked with him and I learned about the work they were doing. I should know more tomorrow.” He went on to tell her about the orbital reactor, the Krakinov theory, and the prototypes, but he could see she was losing interest.

  “Anything new here today?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. I talked with our archi-tech,” said Sealy, “and he had some surprising news.”

  “Oh?” asked Quan, thinking that perhaps the archi-tech had overreached and succeeded in coaxing Sealy into expand the project. Quan was half expecting Armando to try. It was, after all, his business.

  “He was looking through the original building plans of the penthouse,” said Sealy, “and he found something unusual. This place already has a cyber system installed.”

  Quan said, “The penthouse was built twenty-five years ago. He probably meant the smart-house system that controls the optical and com systems.”

  “No. He said it was an IA system. At first, I thought he meant artificial intelligence, but he corrected me. He said it was IA and a constant duty system, whatever that means.”

  “Means it’s on all the time.” Quan looked around the room. “Are you sure he said IA? That means intermodal android.”

  Sealy leaned forward and whispered, “You don’t know, do you? It’s Ning.”

  “What? Wait. No. She’s . . .” He caught himself leaping to a conclusion. She’d always been there, in the background, taking care of the house, serving meals, and, when he was an infant, she used to read to him. Wait. He never actually saw her eat anything. He had never seen her sleeping, and, to his knowledge, she never left the penthouse.

  “Wow. That’s a mind-blower. But twenty-five years ago, bots couldn’t pass for human.”

  “I know. We had bots where I grew up,” said Sealy, “but they weren’t like real people at all. They were just appliances. Ning is scary good. I’ve been watching her all day. The way she moves, her skin texture, and her voice—so perfect—so natural. Next time you see her, look closely at her cuticles and the hairline and you’ll see what I mean.” She leaned in. “It changes things, doesn’t it? Now that we know.”

  Ning entered the room and began to remove the dishes. They went quiet.

  Quan noticed the details Sealy mentioned. Where Ning’s fingernails ended there seemed to be a slight gap where the cuticle began. At her hairline, where the growth pattern should have been more random, it was geometrically perfect. He found himself becoming irritated. This revelation came at a bad time. There was enough on his plate—the investigation, the Jintao Corporation, Father’s research, Sealy’s acrophobia, and now this.

  “I’ve known her all my life,” he said, in a frustrated tone. “Guess I never really looked at her closely.”

  Ning returned a moment later with ramekins of tapioca and steaming cups of oolong. She placed them on the table, straightened, and stood for a moment as if waiting for instruction. Then she pivoted and returned again to the kitchen.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” he said.

  Ignoring his attempt to end the discussion, Sealy looked cautiously at the doorway and said, “Do you think she knows what she is?”

  “How could she? I don’t know. How could she not?”

  “Could you access her central processor? Might be interesting to see what’s inside. Maybe she knows where your father went.”

  “I asked her,” said Quan, exasperated. “If she knew, she would have said so.” He began to fidget. “I really don’t want to think about this just now.”

  “Okay. What would you like to talk about? Did you find anything more in your father’s laboratory?”

  “I’ve read everything in his files. I don’t know what happened. I’m making progress, but I’m frustrated with how slow it’s going. I’m doing my best to get to the bottom of this but there’s just so much I don’t know.”

  Sealy’s eyes were wide with concern. She put a hand on his neck and gently massaged. “Is here anything I can do to help?”

  In another part of the house Ning overheard every word. Quietly, she muttered to herself, “There is nothing you can do.”

  Quan stood up from the dining table, wishing he had gone to Kau Yi Chau Island instead of returning home. “I don’t know what it all means yet,” he said, folding his napkin. “There’s a site I want to visit tomorrow and there’s another consultant I need to talk with. As soon as I know something definitive I’ll let you know.”

  “What about my father?” asked Sealy. “They became friends after our union. Maybe he knows something. We should call him.”

  Quan stopped himself from walking away. She was trying to help and her suggestion opened up a possibility he hadn’t considered. For a moment he thought about why he had turned away—so many diverging claims on his attention, all at the same time—acrophobia, the corporation, Ning, his doctorate—all seemed important. Prioritize.

  Finding father is number one.

  “Yes. Let’s reach out to him,” he said.

  Retiring to his room, Quan changed into his pajamas and was thinking about von Ang and the invention when Sealy opened a com line to her family residence. A static picture of her family filled the view field above their bed. “He’s got privacy mode on,” she said. “Come and talk to him.”

  Quan shifted his position to sit next to her on the bed.

  Her father’s voice was low and slow. After a brief exchange of p
leasantries, Sealy announced, “Quan has questions.”

  Her abruptness thrust him into gear and he leaned forward. “I’m trying to understand the work my father was doing before he disappeared. Did he ever talk to you about his projects?”

  “We talked about business once or twice, but only in general terms, nothing specific. Our last conversation was purely philosophical.”

  “Can you tell me what it was about?”

  “Life forms. It was about life-forms and how different they might be in places other than Earth. Evolution is site specific. Living things, you know, don’t necessarily need to be carbon based. They could conceivably be silicon based, or something else, and they could take on dramatically different forms, maybe even gaseous, like clouds. We discussed the question of survival. My opinion is that life-forms evolving in radically different conditions probably would not do well here. Put an organism outside its tolerance zone and it won’t survive for long.”

  “So, was this related to work he was doing?”

  “Not that I know of. If anything, it was more related to work at my company. As you know, we’re a biotech company. I know it must be frustrating—not knowing what led to his disappearance. I sympathize with what you’re going through. Obviously, you care a great deal and I’m sure your father would be honored to know you’re searching for him, but guard yourself against disappointment. This may not be resolved for a very long time. If there’s anything more I can do to help, don’t hesitate to ask. You’re like a son to me.”

  Quan thanked him for the kind words and the view field faded. Another blind alley, he thought and the parting remark left him with an emptiness inside, reminding him of how few conversations he had had with his father in the past few years. Absorbed by his studies, he now wished they had talked more. The image he held of his father as a venerable corporate executive—heading a company known for commercializing discoveries invented by others—fell short of the reality that his father was doing basic research on such a profound project.

  Sealy said, “It’s been a long day. We should get some rest now.”

  Quan tucked himself under the covers and said goodnight. His thoughts returned to his father and the experiments.

  ~

  Without fully understanding the nature of the phenomenon at the OB12 reactor, Master Jintao instinctively knew it was something profound and was inescapably drawn to study it. After success recreating the phenomenon, he let the young physicist go and continued to experiment on his own. The results continued to be inconclusive. Things disappeared and reappeared without a clue as to why.

  Undeterred, he continued making adjustments and testing. He tried using organic compounds, microorganisms, and botanicals as subjects, looking for any subtle change. He tried different calibrations of time and intensity, all without effect—no clue to indicate what was actually happening. The one constant was that the subjects disappeared and reappeared, unchanged.

  After months of tedious effort, Master Jintao was about to quit the project when he decided to experiment with one more subject. With a pair of tweezers, he held a tiny drosophila by its wing and placed it inside a small glass ampule. He mounted the little cylinder in front of the wave guides and brought the energies online. Numbers streamed, the wave guide hummed in deep bass and subsonic tones. The little fly flicked its wings, the counter rolled backward to zero, and poof, the drosophila was gone. Ten seconds later it reappeared. Peering closely at what was inside the ampule, Master Jintao watched the small creature flick its wings . . . once . . . twice . . . involuntary death throes. Something changed . . . but not in a good way.

  The results were frustrating: things disappearing and reappearing without advancing his understanding. Was it possible that the anomaly had nothing to do with other dimensions at all? Perhaps the machine was generating some kind of temporary cloaking of matter, or perhaps it was expanding or contracting the atomic structure, driving the subatomic particles to a scale that was unrecognizable. Far from proving the Krakinov theory, the machine generated conundrums of its own. And now there was the fly.

  07.02.2088 17.21.33 TEST WITH LIVE DROSOPHILA: SUBJECT FAILED.

  Other than noting the things he used as subjects, there was no compelling reason make detailed notes. After all, what had he learned? What had he proved? He experimented with inorganic and organic specimens, inanimate and live specimens but had they actually gone somewhere? And, if so, where? The only irrefutable fact was that the machine made things disappear.

  Master Jintao’s ability to conquer large, intractable problems was legend; decades of steering the corporation honed that skill, but now an impenetrable wall of ignorance loomed before him. There was the mortality issue. The specimen died. Living systems have a high degree of order and perhaps, he thought, that order was being disrupted on some level. If he could find a way to stabilize a life-form so that it survived, it might say something about what the phenomenon was doing. Unable to make progress with a linear approach, he began to think creatively.

  Perhaps, he thought, if he further stabilized and contained the powerful field energies… Guided by intuition, he set about designing a new component.

  9.

  Returning to Jintao headquarters early the next morning, a secretary directed Quan to the central boardroom where Dr. Hao was conducting a quick pitch session. Several engineering groups were proposing new projects.

  Another distraction, Quan thought.

  As he entered the room, Hao beckoned, indicating a vacant chair next to him. Twenty-three project managers were gathered around a table that was big enough to be the deck of a yacht. In the center of the table, 3-D holo-images filled the space from tabletop to ceiling, and each team was being given five minutes to summarize their proposal. Quan listened patiently, concentrating more on protocol than substance. Nevertheless, one of the proposals piqued his interest. The project was a nuclear waste disposal system, a three-hundred-meter-wide, disk-shaped slingshot, to be placed in geosynchronous orbit, tethered to Earth by a thirty-five-thousand-kilometer cable. The cable would act as an elevator to lift radioactive canisters to the orbiting slingshot, where they would be flung directly into the sun. Although it required a huge up-front investment, the profit tail would span decades. The project lead explained that time was of the essence because a similar system was under development by a consortium of EU companies and Jintao Corporation was playing catch-up.

  Giving a nod, Dr. Hao rendered a decision: Go forward. Not all proposals were so fortunate, and by the end of the session more than half were tabled. As the managers began to filter out of the room, Hao flagged the slingshot team. Placing two fingers on the edge of the table near Quan, he said quietly, “I have a strategy for this one.”

  The three-member team waited patiently until the others left. Hao told the conference room’s recording system to pause. Then he turned to the engineers. “I’m going to suggest a way to outflank the competition. Target the leader of the EU consortium. One of our shell companies in Malta will transfer ten million euros to his personal bank account. Our affiliates in Europe will spread rumors that he has embezzled funds and that the EU consortium is running out of cash to complete the project. Of course, none of this can be traced back to us. The scandal will be leaked to the media, and a few days later we will begin negotiations with the companies who were signed up to use the EU system. Tell them that we are accelerating our program to meet the shortfall. After they have signed with us, the bank in Malta will declare the transfer of funds was in error, investigators will find no evidence of embezzlement, and the leader of the EU consortium will be exonerated. The loss of momentum will put us in the lead.”

  “A bold plan,” said the project leader.

  Dr. Hao replied nonchalantly, “Only a suggestion.”

  “A most excellent suggestion,” said the project leader, bowing to Hao.

  “Nothing is to be written. Verbal updates only,” said Hao.

  Quan was impressed with Hao’s skill—a business
man of the old school. He had suggested a classic Zheng Ren strategy with a bait-and-switch variation. Quan had learned the strategy on his eleventh birthday when his father presented him with two volumes: The Book of Thirty-Six Strategies and The Art of War by Sun Tzu. “You must study these,” his father told him. “Business is war and the goal is to conquer.”

  No doubt Hao’s plan would succeed, so long as his project managers mustered the nerve to see it through.

  ~~~

  In the corridor outside his office, Quan found McGowen waiting for him.

  “She’s here,” said McGowen.

  “Who?”

  “The lass from HK Labs.”

  “So soon?”

  “Aye. You should know me by now—the difficult I do right away, the impossible takes just a wee bit longer. Shall I send her up?”

  “Escort her and if anyone asks questions tell them she’s here to meet with me about postgraduate work I’m doing.”

  Sitting behind his father’s desk, Quan read her file. A PhD in molecular engineering from Peking University at age nineteen. The Ministry of Science and Technology requisitioned her for a government research team, and for the next ten years, she worked in a secure facility designing nanomachines for military use. Her family was generously compensated for her service. Then she accepted a lucrative offer to join Henan Kaifeng Laboratories, a distinguished institution where she was allowed to pursue her own research. Her contributions to food synthesis and nanite technology were noted. Reaching the end of her résumé, Quan walked out to greet her.

  Diayu Lee was of average height, wearing a dark blue cardigan sweater over a starched white shirt and black pants. Her eyes appeared miniscule behind the thick glasses perched on her rather wide nose, and her upper lip only partially covered a pair of oversized incisors. Tilting her head back, she peered through the bottoms of her lenses, and spoke loudly. “Nin hao. I am Dr. Diayu Lee. You are Master Jintao’s son?”