The Gift (15 page)

“How does that explain the childhood memories?” Sam asked.

“The human brain is a remarkable organ, much more flexible in the way it makes associations than that of my makers. I suspect that is a result of being relatively easy prey for much of your species’ existence. Your brains had to be able to recognize a wide variety of evolving threats and recall or create anew a successful response to them in order to survive. In any case, there does not appear to be an overarching pattern for how these associations come to be or are maintained. I cannot tell you why certain neural pathways are stimulated when you ask your questions. I can only tell you that I reinforce them. My reinforcement will fade, just as a naturally refreshed memory will over time. That is how your brain learns new things. However, what we will learn together I will not forget, as I am incapable of doing so. As a result, you will only forget that which you do not wish to remember.”

While Sam was pondering that, Jim woke.

“Welcome back,” Sam said with a grin while heading over to the river to grab a fresh bottle of water for Jim.

“Thirsty,” Jim replied.

“Yeah, figured you would be. There’s a few more of these in the river, keeping cool.” Sam handed Jim the bottle before he sat back down to wait. He’d let Jim talk when he was ready.

Jim finished the first bottle and walked a bit unsteadily to the river to get another. He was half way through that one before saying anything else.

“How long was I out?”

Sam looked at his watch before answering, “A little over three hours. How do you feel?”

“A little groggy; but that’s clearing pretty fast. Other than that, better than I have in more years than I care to recall.” Jim lifted his hands up, looked at them briefly before continuing, “Still wrinkled as hell.”

“I’m sure your gift…”

“His name’s Adam.”

“I’m sure Adam will want to take care of that along with a whole host of other stuff to make his new home as robust as possible. I would appreciate it if you kept your outward appearance the same for a little while. We need to stay under the radar as long as possible.”

“Been looking this handsome for years now, don’t need to change overnight. Does feel damn good not to hurt all over, though!”

“Yeah, I know a bit of what you speak. Jim, I have another favor to ask of you. I don’t think this one is as big as the first one, but you may think it’s bigger.”

“This one worked out pretty well so far. What is it?”

“I want you to give Esther a gift and convince her to take it. Then I want you to stay with her while she goes through the change, just as I did for you.”

“Why Esther, and why don’t you want to give it to her yourself?”

“I chose Esther for some of the same reasons I asked you to join me. She’s strong, experienced and a fighter. She also needs it and will keep her mouth shut about it. Let’s face it, your generation had it tougher in many ways than mine, certainly more so than the current one. As for why I want you to give it to her, I think you can figure it out without my help and I’ve made promises I intend to keep.”

Jim considered it briefly before accepting, “Okay, I’ll do it. In for a penny, in for a pound. Where do I get the gift?”

“Adia can find the ones I need to build the team. She’ll give Adam the coordinates for one on your way home. I’d like you to do it as quickly as possible, but I have one last thing I want to talk with you about before we go. I want to offer Sara a gift. Before I do, I want your opinion on that.”

“I don’t know Sara as well as I know you. She’s a sweet lady, but we don’t really have much in common, so we haven’t talked much. I do know that she’s still concerned about you. I think she thinks you’re closer to the edge than you are and the story you have to tell is way out there. It’s a risk. I don’t know how big a risk. You’d know that better than I.”

“You’re right. It is a risk, but I owe her. Thanks for the feedback. Let’s get out of here.”

“Got it. Take care of yourself, kiddo.”

“Will do, old man.”

Sam knocked on Sara’s door. He’d had to wait until after six to be reasonably sure she’d be home from work. He’d used the time to practice creating and controlling nanites. It was fun. Adia assured him he didn’t have to understand everything they were working on in order to build functional items, but that wasn’t Sam’s way. If it was possible for him to comprehend what was happening, he wanted to, and he would do whatever it took to do so. So far, they’d created fairly simple objects, at least according to Adia. Their most complex construct had been a replication of Sam’s alarm clock. When they were done, Sam couldn’t tell the difference between the original and the copy. He was looking forward to trying more difficult construction, and had instructed Adia to begin the process of creating a pool of as many nanites as practical while he talked with Sara. She was doing so even as Sara answered her door.

“Hi Sam. This is a nice surprise. Please come in.”

Sam did so. “Sorry I didn’t call. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all, Sam. You’re always welcome here. You know that.”

“I do, and thank you.” Sam stood just inside the doorway, obviously uncomfortable.

“Please have a seat. Can I get you something?” Sara asked.

“Some water, if you don’t mind,” Sam said as he took a seat on the lone chair in the small room.

Sara continued talking as she left the living room for the kitchen, “So, what brings you over tonight?”

Sam answered, “Actually, I have a strange story to share with you.” Sam stopped, waiting for her to join him. He wanted to see her face while he told her what was going on.

“Strange good or strange bad?” Sara asked as she walked back into the living room.

“Both, actually.” Sam took the bottle of water from Sara and waited for her to take a seat on the sofa. After she did, he began to tell her about what was going on, “I have some things I want to share with you, but doing so may make you uncomfortable. I don’t know how to change that…”

“I’m not sure I want to hear this, Sam.”

Sam didn’t expect that so soon. Perhaps Jim was more prescient than Sam had known. Still, he had to try.

“Sara, things are going to change soon, and by a lot. I’d like you to be a part of that. I want you to be a part of my team, our team.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sam. Does this have something to do with your work at the base?”

“Yes, and more.”

“Are you authorized to talk with me about this?”

“No, not really, but…”

“Then you need to stop. I don’t want any part of another failure. I’m sorry, Sam, but I think you should leave.”

Sam had feared it might get here eventually. He hadn’t imagined it would do so as soon as it did. He thought about trying again. Deciding against it, he rose and said, “I’m sorry to have bothered you, Sara. Please forgive me. I’ll see myself out.” With that, he set the half-empty bottle of water down and walked to the door. He looked behind him as he opened the door. Sara was not looking at him. He opened the door, walked out and closed it quietly behind him. Talking to her had been a mistake. Time would tell how costly a mistake. She was not Elizabeth, no matter how much she reminded him of her.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

A technician opened the door to Dan’s office and said excitedly, “Doctor Garcia, we’re getting another one.”

Dan had been asleep for a little over an hour. It was the first sleep he’d had since the flight back from the landing site the day before. Those three hours had been all he’d had since being woken early Saturday morning. He wasn’t quite running on fumes, but he was getting close. He chided himself for thinking he had to be there every moment when he had a perfectly capable team, as this technician was demonstrating at that very moment. Still, he knew that now that he was awake, he’d remain so until his body gave him no choice and he collapsed again.

“I’ll be right there. No need to wait for me,” Dan muttered as he moved himself into a sitting position on his couch before putting his shoes back on. He grabbed a half empty bottle of water from the floor and left the office for the east conference room.

When he arrived he noticed all of his team had beaten him there. With a mixture of pride and chagrin, he joined them at the bank of monitors they’d assembled over the middle of the workstations to make it easier to see any new videos produced by Sam’s program. The second one had caught them by surprise and had them all huddled around different workstations. That had made it difficult for the team to comment as a whole. He’d see if this improved the situation. It appeared to be doing so.

Surmising that he’d arrived in time to see the first loop, he held his questions and let the team see it through, just as he was. If the pattern held true to form, the message would repeat eighteen times before stopping. There should be plenty of opportunity to record it in its entirety for detailed analysis, should it warrant such.

The first thing he saw on the screens was what looked like a very simple web page consisting solely of a white background and an input box outlined in black. Dan noticed immediately that the page was being displayed in the standard browser for the type of computer that made up the constituent components of the analysis cluster and that the URL was for the cluster’s control node. As he watched, characters were being entered into the input box. When the last character was added, the words ‘general relativity’ were visible. After a brief pause, a new window opened with Einstein’s famous equation at the top. Underneath it was a series of other equations, some of which Dan understood. Before he or anyone else on the team could begin to work out their relationship to general relativity, as it was currently understood, the page closed and the original page was back, the input box empty once again. The process repeated itself one more time. The second time that Dan had seen the phrase entered was ‘periodic table’. The new window opened in response showed a periodic table very similar to what every modern scientist would be familiar with, similar, but larger. As before, there were a series of equations below the new table, and as before the page closed before anyone had time to begin understanding the relationship of the equations to the table. Dan would learn later that the first term had been ‘humanity.’ The result had been a page with pictures of the male and female forms as well as an hermaphrodite. It had also included a picture of the DNA helix and, unlike what was visible on the other pages, English paragraphs.

As the team continued to watch, the view of a web browser disappeared and was replaced by images of one human form, too generically rendered to ascribe to it a sex, holding a gift. After a few seconds, the gift began to shrink. As it did so, the image zoomed progressively closer to it, moving past the macroscopic scale and into the microscopic. Eventually, it was possible to see cells, but the zoom didn’t stop there, it continued into the cells and between them, stopping when small black objects were visible among them. In short order, the objects had become too diffuse to see and the view began to zoom out, returning to its original scale. Where there had been a human holding a gift, there was now a human, glowing slightly. Other human figures walked onto the scene until there were nine of them in total, arranged in a circle around a generic representation of the cluster upon which the program was running. Lines were then drawn between each of the people and the cluster, with the result being each human form being connected to every other as well as to the cluster. This image remained for several seconds before fading to black and starting over from the beginning.

Dan didn’t have to tell anyone to get a recording of the video. Two members of his team were already doing so. After watching it through a couple more times and taking some notes, Dan told the team to start documenting the website the video portrayed. He then left the team to their work and returned to his office after stopping at the rest room to relieve himself and run some water over his face. The call he was about to make could take awhile.

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

Sam waited until he’d returned home before starting a conversation with Adia. By silent convention, she did not start conversations with him.

“I suspected that might go badly, but that was worse than I’d thought.”

“I don’t understand, Sam. Jim accepted a gift, as you thought he would. Esther accepted hers while you were waiting for Sara, though they have not merged yet. Neither of these people are family, as is Sara, but she wouldn’t even hear of us.”

“It’s a long story, Adia, not one I’m ready to tell. Sara has valid reasons not to put her faith in me. I failed my family. That failure cost me the love of my life and my son. It cost Sara her only sister. Most days I’m amazed she’ll still speak to me, but she’s done much more than that. I know she’s conflicted. I shouldn’t have reminded her, but I had to try to offer her a gift. I owe her my life and I couldn’t find a better way to try to tell her what’s going on.”

Sam stopped talking. He knew he wasn’t making a lot of sense. He also knew why. Part of him desperately needed to talk about what had happened to Elizabeth and Zach. A bigger part of him couldn’t bring himself to do so. That, as much as the physical damage to his body, was why he could no longer work in the field. The shrinks were convinced he needed to let it out. Sam didn’t agree. Telling them what had happened wouldn’t make it any better. It would just be another series of bad events they listened to with professional courtesy while mouthing condolences and keeping tissue handy in case he needed it. Telling them would soil the memory of his family. Telling anyone else would put an undue burden on another person. He couldn’t do that, either.

Sensing Sam’s conflicted emotions, Adia said, “I think you should tell me what happened, Sam.”

“You don’t know death or failure, Adia. I’m afraid you’d lack the perspective to help, even if I could bring myself to ask you for it.”

“You don’t have to ask. I’m offering whatever aid I can provide. I was created to help you. It is my primary purpose and you’re mistaken about what I know about death and failure. Remember, I was created from you. I don’t have your specific memories, at least not of before I was born, but I have your emotions. I don’t know how you experienced the death of your family, but I know how you felt at your deepest moments of despair and failure. Please let me help.”