Renegade World: Future Past (12 page)

She stopped after her twelfth jump. “I think my last jump
was my best.”

Dr. Lieber high-fived her. “The last one was almost
thirteen inches!”

“Someday, I want to be able to jump like the basketball
players who can jump over fifty inches high.”

Just then Camila broadcast a request to come in for dinner.
Naami replied,
Just one minute more!

She ran over to the trampoline, and as she climbed onto it,
she asked her dad and Dr. Lieber to stand at each end and watch her. She
bounced three times, each higher than the previous and did a lazy back
somersault and then up and over into a back somersault. She added a half twist
as she came out of the somersault, bounced once and stopped.

They both applauded her. She bowed to both of them and
giggled. “I am a perfectionist who cannot stop! Until I improve on that belly
flop!” She climbed down, taking her dad's hand in her right hand and Dr.
Lieber's in her left. “Let's go eat. I'm starved!”

Dr. Lieber marveled at how much Naami had changed since he
last seen her in May. She had always been a precocious child. Even at age
three, she had always seemed to pop up every time he came out in his yard,
asking question after question after question. As they all sat down at the
table, he wondered if she still was as curious
. I wonder how many questions
she asks her AI… I wish I would have had an AI to answer all of my questions
when I was young. I wonder why she named hers Abraham.

Naami picked the cherry tomatoes out of her salad and
popped them one by one into her mouth. “I love tomatoes!”

Dr. Lieber asked. “How was your first day of school?”

“It was fun. I made two new friends, Eddie Wong, and Raul
Martinez. Eddie's older brother and sister are brown belts at our studio, so he
knew who I was.” She winked at Camila. “And I figured out that Raul is Camila’s
son, even though neither of them told me.”

Camila’s eyebrows rose, and she glanced nervously at Naami’s
parents. “I have not spoken to Raul since this morning.  He’s in your class?”

“Yes. Didn’t you tell him that you worked for us?”

Camila glanced at Naami’s mom. “I never told him who I
worked for.”

She didn’t say anything more as Naami’s dad said, “The Wong
twins are really good at Tae Kwon Do. I wonder why Eddie hasn’t joined.”

Abraham, add Eddie to the list of people that you
monitor at the studio. Maybe I can figure out why he just watches.
She knew
that he watched his siblings at least once a week. Per her prior requests,
Abraham was downloading the studio’s video and creating highlight videos for
twelve different students.  Once each week, she studied their techniques,
looking for strengths and weaknesses.

She looked up at the others. “The class sometimes works in
teams. Eddie, Raul, Kim, and I are the yellow team. Kim and I are in gymnastics
together too. She's good at gymnastics.”

“What do you do when you are in your teams?” asked Dr.
Lieber.

“Today, we took turns reading out loud.  We couldn't use
our earbuds or implants to help.  We all said how hard it would be to learn to
read if we had to read printed books without text to speech software. Doc
Larry, how did you learn to read?” She finished her salad and started on an
enchilada that Camila had put in front of her.

He thought back. “We didn't have implants when I was your age, but our hand-held devices
could read text to us. If we were reading text on our devices and didn't know a word, we could touch the word and have it pronounce the word or explain its meaning. If we needed to read something that wasn't on our device's screen, we would have to take a picture of it or we could spell the word to our device. It wasn't as fast or smooth as you are used to with your implant, but it worked pretty well.

Now in my great-grandfather's day, it didn't
make any difference whether you read text from the computer screen or a book.
Computers were very primitive. If you didn't know a word, you would try to
sound it out. You might have to try more than one way to sound it out to see if
it sounded like a word you knew.

“You could look the word up in a printed dictionary, which
was really slow, or you could type it into a dictionary program, which was faster
if your computer even had dictionary program. Both types of dictionaries
explained what the word meant, but even the dictionary software didn't have
audio. You couldn't hear the computer say the word.”

“Computers didn't have audio? They were primitive!”

“Well, they had some audio, but it was mainly beeps and
other simple sounds. Digitized sounds that let you hear a word weren't
available until a few years later.”

“How did kids learn to read?”

“A child's parents or someone else who knew how to read
had to sit down and read with the child.”

“But people weren't always around when I wanted to read!”

“That's right. You and your friends have a big advantage
that even I didn't have. You have your own personal reading coach with you anytime
you want to read. Some of your classmates may actually use their reading coaches
too much.”

Naami scrunched up her face. “What do you mean too much?”

“Some people let their
coaches
read for them all of
the time and never learn to read the words for themselves.”

Naami thought for a minute. “I hadn't thought about doing
that, but what’s wrong with having everything read to you?”

Her dad answered, “It works OK for some people, but it’s generally
slower to listen than it is to read. It’s also much easier to go back and
re-read parts than to instruct your
coach
to back up and re-read
something to you again. People who do non-repetitive things at work can't do
their jobs very well unless they can read.”

“Then why don't we change English to make reading easier?
Couldn't we write words so that an ‘a’ is pronounced the same way in every
word? Spanish is more like that. They have rules that let you know how to
pronounce a letter if it can be pronounced differently.”

“Who told you about Spanish?” asked Dr. Lieber.

“Raul told me, but I kind of knew that anyway because
Abraham and I have been reading Spanish together.”

Her dad smiled. “Actually many people
agree with you Naami. There have been proposals to translate all English text
that is stored on computers to a new phonetic spelling.  As fewer and fewer
people read printed text, it actually may make sense to change all the computer
text. We'd probably need a few more letters in the alphabet.”

“Why?”

“Take the words 'than' and 'thank', for example.”

Naami put her fingers on her throat, “Oh! Vocalized and
non-vocalized sounds from the same two letters.”

The three adults looked at her in surprise. “Where did you
learn about vocalized and non-vocalized sounds,” asked Dr. Lieber.

Naami thought about the question. Abraham hinted,
You
asked me about why 'ed' at the end of words was pronounced three different
ways.

She explained to the adults. “I wondered why the 'ed' at
the end of words was pronounced like the sound of the letter t, the sound of the letter d by itself, or the sound of 'ed' together. I learned
that it depended on the sound before the 'ed'.”

She put her fingers on her throat. “If a sound, like the letter l,
uses my voice box and makes my fingers vibrate, then the sound of the letter d is used
at the end.” She made the sound of the letter and then said, "walled.”

“The sound of the letter t is used at the end if the sound before the ending doesn't make my fingers vibrate.” She made the sound of the letter k. Then she said, “Walked.”

Dr. Lieber thought for a minute. “When do you use the 'ed'
sound.”

She giggled. “When the sound before the 'ed' is the t sound or d
sound only the 'ed' sound works.” She gave him a challenging look. “Just try it.”

“Tested.” Dr. Lieber laughed. “I never thought about
that.” 

They asked more questions about school, and Naami answered
them, punctuated with many giggles. Finally, her mom told her that it was bath
time. Naami gave Dr. Lieber a hug and left with Camila.

Dr. Lieber chuckled at Fred. “Impressive for a
five-year-old!”

Fred looked proud but a little worried. “Actually, Anita
and I are still worried that she is so far from the norm that she won’t fit
in.”

“It sounds to me like she is fitting in just fine.”

N
aami lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.
Abraham,
teach me some more math. The math at school today was kind of boring because it
was too easy. The answer to every question about factions was a whole number. 
I thought they might ask a question where the answer had decimals or even a
repeating decimal pattern. Patterns are cool.

You should get some sleep.

You don’t have to ask me any questions. Just explain
stuff, and I’ll listen. How about the math of shapes?

OK. I’ll explain about flat shapes. One very general flat
shape that math describes is called a polygon. A polygon only has sides that
are straight. The sides don’t cross each other. They connect at points. Only
two sides connect together at the same point. There can be any number of sides,
but together, the sides surround or close an area.
 Abraham displayed
pictures of different kinds of polygons such as rectangles, octagons, and
triangles.

The polygon with the least possible number of sides is
the triangle which has three sides.
Abraham showed pictures and explained
about different kinds of triangles: equilateral triangles, isosceles triangles,
scalene triangles, right triangles, obtuse triangles, and acute triangles.

Just after Abraham’s explanation that longest side of a
right triangle is called the hypotenuse, always found opposite the right
angle, Naami started drifting off to sleep. The last thing she heard was that trigonometry
is the study of the relationship between the angles of triangles and their
sides.

T
oday was day three of Applied Nanotechnology’s annual
long-term planning process.  Ben Lieber looked down the table at the other
twelve participants. Ten of them had a Ph.D. of one kind or another, and the two younger men sitting at the other end of the table were Ph.D. candidates. Dr. Larry Lieber, Ben's dad, the founder and Chairman Emeritus, was the only one of them who people called Dr. Everyone else was called by their first
name.

Dr. Lieber had started Applied Nanotechnology almost forty
years ago. Eighty-five years old, he looked and acted like he was in his late fifties. With the
acquisition of several genetics research and development companies, ANT’s
biotech division by itself was larger than all but two other biotech companies.

Together, the Liebers owned forty-one percent of the
company. Eric Carlson owned nine percent, and the Schmidts, Fred and Anita,
owned ten percent. Ben looked down the table at Rebecca Lee, Miguel, and Geoffry. Although they were consultants, not employees, they each owned between one and two percent of the company.

The first two days had been dedicated to brainstorming
about potential new applications of nanotechnology and genetics, possible near-term
breakthrough technologies both from inside and outside the company, and longer
term nanotechnology trends.

This morning they had listened to two one-hour
presentations from outside consultants. The first presentation was about
nanotechnology consumer trends and the second was about competitive trends. For
the remainder of the morning, Eric Carlson had presented graphs and charts put
together by his marketing departments.

During lunch, they discussed what they had heard during the
morning. In the afternoon, they were going to discuss the business environment,
focusing on government policies and potential new laws that might impact the
business.

Geoffry waved his hand to attract everyone's attention.
“Before we get started, I want to ask a question. Is this country stupid enough
to reelect President Arbustor to another term in November? He's gotten us into
yet another war in the Middle East that we can't afford. His policies have
practically given the remnants of the U.S. software industry to India and
China. His friends from the religious right have got him to push through
restrictive biotechnology laws that will set us back—”

Ben interrupted. “Enough, Geoffry! We can talk politics
later. Besides, you're preaching to the choir here.”  He introduced the two
political analysts who had been invited to present their views on the likely
impact of each candidate’s policies on ANT's business.

A
fter the afternoon session ended, everyone quickly left
except for Ben, Fred, and Dr. Lieber. “Dr. Lieber,” said Fred, “Naami enjoyed
seeing you the other day, and she made me promise to invite you to dinner
again. I told her you were probably busy, but she made me promise to ask.” The
Schmidts' old house had been on the same cul-de-sac as Dr. Lieber's, and Naami
had been a frequent visitor to Dr. Lieber's yard and home.

He felt closer to Naami than even her parents would have
guessed. “Tell her I’m sorry, but I can’t. I’ve got dinner with an old friend
tonight. Tomorrow night, I’m getting together with Ben, Naomi, and Aaron, and
I’m off to the airport as soon as we’re done eating, but tell her I’m going to
surprise her real soon.”

Fred laughed. “Naami already knows that you’re moving
here.”

“How did the little scamp find out? You and Anita promised
to keep it a secret.”

“We didn’t say anything.”

He looked at his son. “Aaron doesn’t know, does he?”

Ben shrugged. “As far as I know, but if Naami knows, Aaron
will know soon. She talks more than anyone I know.”

“Well, I guess I’d better tell him at dinner.” He glanced
up at Fred. “Did she tell you how she knew?”

“When I asked, she just giggled and said that she had her
sources.” He shook his head. “Too much Nancy Drew.” He extended his hand to Dr.
Lieber. “Have a good dinner. I'm heading home now so that I'm there when Naami
gets home from gymnastics.”

As Fred turned to go, Ben asked, “Naami still likes school?”

“Yes. She made two new friends.”

 “I'm happy to hear that.” Aaron had told him that he was
worried about how Naami would fit in at school, especially jumping right into
third grade. “We’ll see you in the morning.” As Fred left the large conference
room, Ben motioned to his dad. “Let’s go to my office.” As they walked, he
asked, “How are you feeling, Dad?”

Dr. Lieber bent and straightened his left arm and smiled.
“Tennis elbow, not a problem.” He windmilled his right arm in a circle. “Torn
supraspinatus tendon repaired.” He did a couple of deep knee bends. “Knee
cartilage regrown.” He pumped both arms. “I'm great.”

Dr. Lieber was boasting about technology developed or
perfected at their company.  Clinics around the world now implanted ANT NanoStimBots
into patients damaged tendons, ligaments, and joints. The NanoStimBots
stimulated the body to repair tendons, ligaments, and cartilage that it would
not have done on its own. ANT had a 63 percent market share for these types of
products.

He followed his son into his office. After the door had closed,
he pointed at his head. “Still sharp as a tack thanks to my friend.” By friend,
he meant his AI that he had named Socrates. Dr. Lieber had insisted that he be
the first person to undergo a neural splice operation. At the time of his
operation, even auditory splices had only been approved for a few years. Since
no one outside of ANT was aware that the full neural splice technology had been
perfected, the operation was performed covertly by Anita.

Dr. Lieber was the only person to receive a Gen I neural
splice. Three years later, Anita Evangelista-Schmidt assisted by her younger
cousin and protégé, Rebeka Lee Johnson, had operated on Ben Lieber. He received
the first Gen II splice, and later that same year, Eric Carson and Fred Schmidt
received Gen II splices. Two years later Rebeka Lee performed the operations on
Naomi Lieber and Anita Evangelista-Schmidt. She had been nervous about her
first solo on Anita, but everything went perfectly. Two years later Ann Carlson
and her daughter Erica received the last Gen II splices.

Since then, Rebeka Lee, Miguel, Geoffry, Aaron, Thor, and Naami
had received Gen III splices.  Everyone's implant had been upgraded to the
latest nano-fabricated computer-on-a-chip in the last year. Everyone except
Geoffry and all of the Carlsons had embedded AI software. The Carlsons wanted
to wait, and Geoffry was philosophically opposed to onboard AI software.

Miguel frequently joked that he knew why Geoffry didn’t
want one, that if he had an AI, he would argue non-stop with it.

When Ben opened his door, the lights and the three large
digital panels that covered much of the three walls came on. As his dad sat
down at the beautiful, black conference table, Ben walked over and grabbed a
bottle of water from the built-in fridge. He pointed to the machine on the
counter above the fridge. “Tea?”

“No thanks.” He looked around. “Rather sparse.” The table
and twelve chairs were the only furniture in his office.

“In this digital age, I don’t need anything else. I don’t
even really need the panels, but they are convenient.”

“I can’t bring myself to get rid of any of my office
furniture. It makes me feel at home.” He closed his eyes briefly. “And to be
able to view so much instantaneously without a screen, I still am not quite
used to it.”

They spoke at length about the decision to spin off a new
company that manufactured and sold high-end earbuds.  Their earbud division
still had 35 percent of the total market and 63 percent of the high-end market.
ANT would retain the patent rights to key technologies.

The discussion was a preview of tomorrow’s meetings where
they would discuss priorities for the next five years, possible spin-offs or
acquisitions, and whether the current year plan would need to be adjusted. The
group would shrink by five. Miguel, Geoffry, Rebeka Lee, and two department
heads only participated in the first three days.

Ben summarized his position. “As we discussed several times
this week, our market share is probably going to drop into the low 20s within
five years. The total market will be significantly smaller too. I think we
maximize shareholder value by doing a spin off sooner rather than later.”

“I concur, and I think you’ve almost convinced Eric. Are we
also going ahead with the plans to spin off our space projects into a separate
company?”

“Yes, but that’s not on the agenda this week.”

“And the negotiations to acquire the assets of LunarX?”

“Also not on the agenda, but we’re real close.” LunarX
Industries had only had eleven profitable quarters in the twenty years since
they built their lunar facilities. Corporate activists had been demanding that
they close the lunar base and focus on their near-Earth asteroid mining.

LunarX had held out so far, but analysts expected them to
close the base within a year unless there was a breakthrough in helium-3 fusion.
Though a breakthrough had been anticipated for over sixty years, frustratingly, it still seemed just out of reach.

While the Russian announcement in 2006 that it planned to
mine lunar helium-3, with a permanent Moon base to be established by 2015,
never got off the ground, the US had established a small facility on the moon
in 2025. A joint public-private venture, five years later, it was abandoned, a
victim of budget cuts. Although two hundred kilograms of helium-3 had been
mined and shipped back to Earth, proving that it could be done, there wasn’t
sufficient demand to make continuing operations worthwhile.

In 2033, China re-established a base at the same site, but
they abandoned it in 2037. While the amount was denied by the Chinese government,
it was reported that they had shipped home just under a metric ton of helium-3.

In 2141, LunarX had set up a base on the Chinese site. Initially,
they denied any interest in mining helium-3, but renewed interest in helium-3
fusion led to much speculation and finally some small-scale mining.

“As a major supplier to LunarX, we’ve been up-front with
the stock analysts that we still believe their lunar manufacturing will be
profitable in the long run even if the demand for helium-3 never materializes.”
He smiled. “Of course, we have hemmed and hawed a bit when they press us for
our definition of long run. And when pressed, we concede that LunarX’s
near-Earth asteroid operations are likely to be more profitable for the next
few years.”

Using the same robotic technology as they used on the moon,
LunarX had established profitable mines on three near-Earth asteroids. As they
ramped up the value-added products, manufactured on-site from the raw materials
that they mined, their profit would continue to go up. Much of the LunarX tech
used components built by ANT subsidiaries.

“So why can’t you close the deal?”

“We could close it now, but we think we can get better
terms.”

“Why?”

“Two things. First, the LunarX employees stationed on the
moon are not happy. Half of them are overdue to return to Earth. Our behavior
specialists, backed by their AI software, are predicting a work slowdown or
walkout. I think LunarX is angling for us to take over the responsibility for
bringing them back.”

“OK, and second?”

“LunarX is concerned by the recent rumor that our DS1 probe
is not really intended to reach deep space at all, but to provide a proof of
concept that the Mars colony could be economical someday.”

“You’re more devious than me. You’re letting them believe
that you may be more interested in a Mars base than their lunar facility.” The
Mars colony had been settled just over thirty years ago by the four founders.
Although the original target had been to transport two hundred colonists to
Mars over a twenty-five year period, only one hundred twenty had made it to
Mars before the two spaceships suffered irreparable damage in route, and the
program went bankrupt.

Dr. Lieber’s stomach rumbled. “OK, I’ll leave the
negotiating to you and your team. Are we done? I'm starved.”

“That’s all I had.”

As he turned to walk out Dr. Lieber said, “You know what
the best thing about Socrates is?”

“What?”

“I always remember where I put things… like my rental car.”

T
he petite woman in the utility truck across the street
from the ANT corporate office frowned as she said, “I’m not sure whether to
laugh or cry. OK, we’ll discontinue surveillance.” She pulled on her medium
length red hair and frowned as she terminated the connection.

Her partner, a lean, pale man, raised his thick, dark
eyebrows as she massaged her temples. “Bad news, Darcy?” They had been
eavesdropping on the ANT meetings for the last three days, capturing wireless
traffic and vibrations from the office windows.

“ANT is mocking us, Boian. The agency supercomputers spent
hundreds of hours decrypting the wireless traffic that we collected only to
find that it contained audio of the 'Star Spangled Banner,' 'America the
Beautiful,' 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic,' and other patriotic songs.”

Although he already knew the answer, he asked, “The audio
specialists, they get audio off the windows?”

She shook her head. “Someone there has a real sense of
humor.  When they filtered and enhanced the vibrations from the windows of the
conference room, underneath the white noise, they uncovered audio.” 

“And?”

She laughed. “They’re making fools out of us. The computer
identified the voices as cartoon characters Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Elmer
Fudd.”

Samael vrea rezultate.
He and Darcy were independent
contractors for the agency, but he served a second master, Samael, the
patriarch of the Ambrosia family. Two hundred years old, he was not sure how old
the patriarch was, but like everyone else in the family, the old man scared the
hell out of him. When Samael wanted results, he accepted no excuses. He sighed.
Am trăit o viață lungă.