“No.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Every time we try to subtract out the anomalous signature, we end up losing some of the good data.”

“Which correction algorithm are you using?”

“Yerkes-Hamilton.”

“Hm…that should work for a K-anomaly like that…”

“Yeah, I know that.” Malthora frowned again and took a sip of his espresso.

“You’re gonna get an ulcer drinking that stuff.”

“I’m going to get an ulcer working here no matter what happens. Ah! There! It’s done!” Malthora peered blearily at the screen, and Dickerson joined him. In a blank white window on the monitor, a skein of colored particle traces swept downwards, followed by a second, differently-colored tangle. Then, a hideous neon-magenta trace descended. Malthora, who had been preparing to take another sip of espresso, dropped his cup. Dickerson took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, put his glasses back on, and fainted.

The phone rang. Dr. Flesichmann groaned and rolled over, wrapping himself in a straitjacket of blankets. He fumbled for the receiver, picked it up, and stuck it to his ear.

“Peter Fleischmann…” he mumbled.

“It’s Raja Malthora.”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“Something really odd happened.” Fleischmann winced visibly and sat up, untangling his legs from the covers.

“What? A malfunction?”

“I don’t know. Looks more like a practical joke to me.”

“What do you mean, practical joke?”

“Well, the last collision gave us some really odd results…I think you probably ought to come in.”

“It’s three A.M.!”

“You’re the only one who knows the computer systems…well, the only one in Geneva, at least.” Fleischmann said a very unpleasant word in German and swung his feet off the edge of the bed. He stood up and ran his fingers through the bramble of hair atop his head.

“All right…just hold everything until I get there. Don’t touch anything!”

“Okay.”

Five minutes later, Fleischmann was haphazardly dressed and driving down the motorway. He spotted the sign that read “CERN: Entree B” CERN. The largest particle-physics research center on Earth, home of the world’s biggest particle accelerator. Flesichmann, despite having worked at CERN for half a decade, still found this hard to believe. After all, the CERN complex itself looked like little more than a modest campus in the middle of a big circular field. That field, however, was encircled by a ring of superconducting magnets capable of accelerating particles to nearly the speed of light and smashing them together, generating bursts of energy that they used to probe the deepest, smallest structures in all of the universe. It was an incredibly expensive facility to run, which helped to explain Fleischmann’s habitual irritation when things went wrong.

Flesichmann parked his Citroën and caught the shuttle to the main building, then took the elevator up to the third floor. He found Room 3035 and threw the door open.

“All right, what’s going on?” he grumbled, striding up to the monitor, against which Malthora and Dickerson were still pressed. Fleischmann pushed Dickerson aside and gazed at the display. There was the standard thornbush of multicolored particle traces. But, overlaying them, there was another set of particle traces, highlighted in brilliant magenta. Flesichmann screwed up this face when he saw this layer, and reached up to turn the monitor towards him, as though the cryptic image might be a result of seeing the image from an angle. His face only contorted further when he saw the image straight-on.

The source of the confusion was this: the magenta particle traces, apparently not the result of any kind of interference or malfunction, spelled a word. It was unmistakably a word.

HELLO

“Scheiße! Somebody’s screwing around!” bellowed Fleischmann. “I hope it’s not needed, but I’d like to remind everybody here that this a serious research facility, not a university campus!” Malthora and Dickerson looked up at him, seeming hurt.

“We didn’t do this,” protested Malthora, scratching the back of his neck.

“Call Dr. Mbola!”

“Mbola’s been in the hospital since Monday. Liver problem.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what to make of it,” said Dickerson.

“It’s a prank. Don’t even think of making anything else of it. There is no, and I repeat for emphasis, absolutely no way that pimesons could spell out the word ‘hello’. Understand?” The other scientists nodded, but Malthora still looked remarkably uneasy.

…

In the next week, Flesichmann re-ran the experiment. Unable to find any way to remove the prank’s traces from the data, Fleischmann angrily re-did the collision, and put all the scientists who had been manning the accelerator that night on probation.

Then, the results of the re-run came back. Flesichmann stared at the particle tracks with great dismay.

HELLO

they read. He suspended five suspect scientists — including Dickerson, Malthora, and Mbola — and ran the experiment a third time. The same result.

HELLO

written in pimesons on the computer monitor. Software engineers were called. Technicians were brought in. When Fleischmann was convinced that there was no way this was a harmless prank, he began thinking sabotage. Radical religious group, he assumed, trying to make it look like God or whatever other deity they worshiped was sending them a message.

…

“All right, we’ve got the detector out!” called the crane operator. The spidery machine swiveled away from the enormous hexagonal detector that was the heart of the HEQGP experiment. Fleischmann watched as the intricate detector panel swung out into open space and was gently lowered into a foil-lined, padded cradle. He slipped the surgical mask down over his face, tightened the hood of his white bunny suit, and, confident that he wasn’t going to shed any dust on the detector, stepped up to it.

The detector itself was a fairly bland thing. A steel-gray panel a meter and a half square, surrounded by a yellow-painted titanium frame bristling with electronics. The technicians gathered around the instrument, searching for any suspicious additions to the electronics. There had to be something that explained the anomalous message. After all, what were the chances of a bunch of pimesons happening to all fly out in the exact right directions to form the letter “H”, much less a whole word? Fleischmann decided that the probability of this was exactly zero. He craned his neck, but two of the bulkier technicians had bunched in in front of him. Someone said something in Swahili that dripped with astonishment. An excited volley of Czech and Polish followed. Someone exclaimed something Fleischmann couldn’t catch in German. Flesichmann, putting his extensive English vocabulary to work, managed to frighten away the two technicians in front of him and get a good look at the detector.

HELLO

read the detector. The word was burned right into the metal. It looked as though someone had turned an immense cutting laser on the metal plate. Fleischmann went red immediately, and went into an absolutely unprintable tirade, alternating between foul words in German and fouler words in English.

Scientists and technicians were fired in the weeks that followed. Malthora and Dickerson were among them. The HEQGP detector was dismantled, examined minutely, repaired, and reassembled.

 Fleischmann suffered a heart attack in Room 3035 the month after the detector was reinstalled. He was dead by the time a graduate student stumbled across his body. His hands, already stiffened with rigor mortis, clutched a torn printout, which he’d apparently snatched from the printer as the heart attack felled him. Only the top two-thirds had printed, and part of that had been torn away as Fleischmann collapsed, but the reason for the heart attack was still utterly clear.

The printout was of the same sort of particle graph that had started the whole debacle. There was the standard thicket of particolored particle traces. Overlaid was the magenta skein of a cloud of high-velocity pimesons. Shock, it was decided, had been the cause of Fleischmann’s heart attack, for the pimesons spelled out the words

HELLO? IS ANYONE THERE?

As he watched them run from one destination to another, the old man’s worn brow creased with confusion. His head swiveled as he watched the young people dashing to and fro. A few cars raced by on Benton Road, and the old man seemed quite confused by these as well. He stroked his long, gray beard thoughtfully, and pulled down his furry hat against the chill December wind.

He’d been sitting there for about twenty minutes – occasionally attracting confused looks of his own from the people who jogged by him – when, suddenly, the clock on the tower at the corner of the park struck one. It gave one rapid chime; not a bell-chime, but a sharp, electronic sound with a tin edge that sounded like two pieces of tinfoil brushing against one another. The man stared up at the clock, and was still staring long after the chime had faded. His eyes were drawn to the letters “CTk,” which were printed very large on the clock’s face.

After a while, the old man got up from the bench, re-adjusted his hat, and crossed through the park to a little restaurant he’d seen on his way into the city. He followed the sidewalk past the wooded back corner of Benton park and found the diner, called “UpStreet.”

Inside, people chattered loudly over hamburgers and hot dogs. The old man’s eyes widened with surprise as he listened to the great rapidity with which they talked. All of their sentences seemed to be compressed into long, rambling single words.

“DadHadAnotherHeartAttack…” overheard the old man as he passed an overly-chipper couple. He seated himself at the counter and yanked a napkin out of the dispenser to wipe his cold nose with. As he did, the waitress flitted over, regarded him with concern and confusion, and disappeared again. As she trotted – actually, it was more of a jog – away, the old man looked up to make his order, but by then, she had hurried off to another customer. The old man cast a weary look in her direction, and waited for her to return.

She did so suddenly, hopping up to the counter with her little pad and pen already in hand.

“HelloSirWhatCanIGetYou?” It took a moment for him to figure out just what the woman had said, and in that time, she began to tap her foot impatiently. The tapping seemed too rapid, and it made the old man uncomfortable.

“I’d like a cheeseburger, dear.”

“ThankYouComingRightUp.” He sighed at her when his back was turned and closed his eyes, massaging his temples with the tips of his fingers.

Suddenly, the door flew open behind him, and a pair of young women burst in. The old man ducked, thinking that only a pair of stickup-artists would throw a door open that violently, but the women simply galloped over to a booth in the corner and began talking excitedly. By now, the old man looked very bewildered, and extremely ill at ease. He took off his furry hat and started idly picking at the lining.

Suddenly, his cheeseburger arrived. The waitress practically threw it at him, and slammed a bottle of water on the counter next to it, then hurried off again. He took a cautious bite, made a face, and put the burger back down, then attempted to flag down the waitress. She already had the irritated look on her face when she drew up to the counter.

“YesWhatCanIDoForYou?”

“This burger is cold,” complained the old man. In the time it took him to say that, the waitress’s indignant look deepened.

“IfItWasHotYou’dHaveToEatSlow!” Before he could reply, she was off yet again. His appetite somewhat diminished, the old man slapped a five-dollar bill onto the counter and left without collecting his change.

From UpStreet, the old man meandered through the park again, following the elliptical path inscribed in the rectangular green. The park centered on a statue – the old man had no doubt that this was the famous Benton after whom the park was named – and paths radiated out in eight directions from it. The old man noticed that he was the only one on the curved path. All the other people in the park jogged – or bicycled – along the straight paths.

That sense of great hurriedness bothered the old man deeply. He’d noticed a similar phenomenon ten years ago, the last time he’d come down out of the hills, but even then there had been people perfectly willing to take their time and walk the long way. Now, though, everybody seemed to be in a tremendous hurry. He hunched up his shoulders in a protective gesture and pulled the fur hat back onto his head.

As he passed the clock tower on his way to find a hotel, he was startled to hear it chime again. Two chimes, this time. The old man looked up, incredulous, and saw that, indeed, the clock had just struck two. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stared up, brow furrowed. He was deeply troubled. Had it really taken him an hour to walk from one corner of the park to the other and back? He scanned Benton Park, and realized that, even at his comparatively slow pace, the round trip should not have taken more than thirty minutes, or perhaps forty-five at the outside.

As he prepared to march on, shaking his head with disbelief, his eyes fell on a man who stood out in the rapidly-thinning crowd. He was a young man, no older than thirty, wearing a sweater the color of strong tea. He had a long face and a crop of well-combed brown hair which he kept brushing away from his perpetually-knitted brow. His face bore a strange expression that spoke both of confusion and deep, deep concern. But what made him stand out from the crowd was his speed. He was a remarkably slow walker. He looked like he might even be walking as slowly as the old man himself. The old man moved in the slow man’s direction instinctually, but the slow man took fright and turned abruptly onto Peck Avenue, the look of concern growing to dominate his countenance.

The old man stopped at the corner under the bell tower and watched the slow man make his way down Peck Avenue, much faster people passing him on either side every few seconds. The way the man’s hands were jammed into his pockets, the old man thought he must be hiding something. That would certainly have explained his wariness.

The old man’s head jerked to the right as he heard a shout from the other side of Peck Avenue. Two policemen were now standing at the edge of Benton Park and staring intensely at the slow walker.

“ExcuseMeSirStopRightThere!” cried one of them, and they took off at an incredibly fast run towards the slow man, who was only able to manage a quick jog. He turned on his heel and ran back up Peck Avenue, towards the corner across from which the old man stood. Just as he rounded this corner, one of the cops grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him up against the brick wall of an antique shop.

“HeyBuddyJustWhatYouThinkYou’reDoing?” asked the second cop. The slow man’s eyes flicked from one cop to the other, and once – alarmingly – to the old man, whom the cops thankfully didn’t notice. When it became clear that nobody was going to help him, the slow-walker took his hands out of his pockets and brushed them on the legs of his pants. The cops backed up, and let his feet fall back to the sidewalk.

“IaskedYouAQuestionWhatAreYouDoing?”

“IWasJust WalkingOfficer.” The slow man’s words weren’t quite as fast as the cops’, and every now and then, a separation emerged between them. The cops appeared to regard this with great suspicion.

“WhatHaveYouGotInYourPocket?”

“NothingOfficer.”

“EmptyOutYourPockets.”

“IHaven’tGot Anything Officer.”

“EmptyOutYourPockets!” The man bowed his head and thrust his left hand ruefully into his left pocket, producing what looked like a wallet and a set of keys. Hesitantly, he stuck his right hand in his right pocket, and produced something which he kept clutched tightly in his fist. The cops leaned closer, and the man bowed his head lower.

By now, the old man had become quite interested, and had cautiously crossed the street, where he pretended to be window-shopping for antiques.

“What’sThatThere?” asked one cop.

“NothingOfficer.”

“What’sThatThere?” demanded the other cop, and grabbed the young man’s wrist, pulling it from behind him, and forcing open his hand. The two cops stared awestruck at the object he held, which the old man recognized after a moment as a pocket-watch. One of the cops remained open-mouthed, but his friend seized the slow-walker angrily by the shoulders.

“SirAreYouAwareThatPossessionOfANon-certifiedTimepieceIsACrime?” The slow man did not speak, but merely bowed his head even lower, so that his chin was almost resting on his chest.

“AllRightTurnAround?” demanded the other cop, readying his handcuffs. Just then, the first cop glanced through the window of the antique shop and saw the old man there. Leaving his friend to cuff the slow-walker, he rounded the corner and came up next to the old man, who was now feeling extremely uneasy.

“WhatAreYouLookingAtThere?” asked the cop.

“That chair!” said the old man, pointing at a hideous cane chair by the window.

“What’sWrongWithYourMouth?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it.”

“WhyYouTalkSoSlow?” The old man was distracted as a car went skidding around the corner, burning rubber as it sped from Benton Street onto Peck Avenue, racing quickly out of sight. “AnswerMe!”

“To my knowledge, I’m not talking slowly…” The cop gave him the same sour look he’d seen on the waitress’s face.

“EmptyOutYourPockets!” The old man complied. All he had was a small handful of money and a faded driver’s license. After returning his possessions, the cop went back around the corner, making sure to shoot him a suspicious glare through the window of the antique shop. He then returned to his friend, who had by that time handcuffed the young man and read him his rights. They waited there on the sidewalk for a few minutes, until a cruiser appeared from nowhere, squealed to a stop, and disgorged two more officers. One of them pushed the slow-walker into the back of the car while the other waited behind the wheel. Once the rear door was closed again, the cop got back in and the first cop – the one who’d yelled to the slow man to begin with – pointed around the corner at the old man, who suddenly felt compelled to run. He had a feeling, though, that that would cause trouble, so he stood there obediently, fidgeting with his furry hat, his shoulders hunched up protectively.

The cruiser roared around the corner and skidded to a stop again, this time in front of the old man. The passenger cop got out and looked meaningfully up and down him, then stepped up until their shoes were nearly touching. He was much taller than the old man and had a face like a brick building.

“WhatAreYouDoingOld-timer?” demanded the passenger-cop. The old man looked confused.

“I’m just standing here!” he contested. The passenger-cop leaned even closer. He had breath that smelled of rancid spearmint, and it made the old man feel sick.

“WhatDidYouSayToMe?” The old man felt more confused than ever.

“I said I’m just standing here!”

“HowDareYouTalkToAnOfficerofthelawInThatManner! You’reUnderArrestForAssaultingApoliceofficer!” The cop spun the old man around, slapped cuffs on his wrists, and shoved him into the back of the police car with the slow-walker, who sat there with his head still hung low. Then, the police car sped off, took a sudden, lurching turn, and bolted down Carrington Avenue.

The driver didn’t seem to have any interest in obeying the speed limit, and the few times the old man was able to steal a glance at the speedometer, he saw that it was hovering around a hundred and twenty miles an hour. The old man shivered, and wiggled his head to try to loosen his collar. Suddenly, he felt very nervous, and breathing was becoming difficult.

Before he could faint, though, the police car suddenly skidded to a stop, then darted to the right and bounded up a ramp into a parking structure. Before he was sure what had happened, the old man and the slow-walker were dragged out of the back of the car, forcibly jogged past a security booth, and shoved into a room.

It was a sterile room, white-walled with linoleum floors. In one corner was a diagonal counter protected by bullet-proof glass, with a very stern woman cop behind it, who reminded the old man of the waitress at UpStreet. The two walls adjacent to the booth were covered with posters, most of which gave details of various laws. The remaining two walls were lined with benches, where a few people sat, all of them handcuffed and accompanied by cops. The passenger-cop pushed the old man and the slow-walker down on a bench near the door and stood over them, nodding at the cop in the booth, who was currently saying something to someone standing next to her.

“Next!” she called as soon as the conversation ended, which didn’t take long. The passenger-cop dragged his two prisoners over to the booth, said something to the woman which the old man couldn’t catch, and then shot them both hateful glances. The woman punched a button. A buzzer sounded beyond the door next to the counter, and the door clicked open. Just before the passenger-cop dragged both of them through the doorway, the old man caught a glimpse of the booth-cop’s clock. Unbelievably, it read 3:45. He also noted that same enigmatic “CTk” symbol printed on the clock’s face. Then, the passenger-cop dragged them both through the doorway and kicked the heavy, barred door shut behind him.

They jogged down the hallway, took a right, passed through a barred gate, and were shoved into an empty cell. The passenger-cop undid their handcuffs and shoved the door to behind him, disappearing with a slam of the gate beyond. His hammering footsteps echoed through the sterile hall, then fell silent. The old man sat down on the wooden plank that passed for the cell’s bench, and hung his head between his knees. He felt terrified and incredibly befuddled. The slow-walker sat down next to him.

“What did they get you for?” asked the man morosely, his voice dropping to a normal speed.

“I don’t know…” whispered the old man.

“My name’s Robert Garrison.”

“I’m Chester.” Robert extended a pasty hand, but Chester didn’t shake it, and they fell into silence again. After a while, Chester looked up at him. “Why did they arrest you?” he asked. The young man bowed his head again, then sat back against the concrete wall.

“The watch. What else?”

“How can they arrest you for having a watch?”

“It wasn’t a certified watch.”

“What do you mean, certified?” Robert looked up as though Chester had asked “What do you mean, the sky is blue.”

“It’s not certified…it’s not a CTK watch!” Chester felt a chill run down his back as he remembered the cryptic “CTk” he’d seen on those clocks’ faces.

“What is CTK?”

“Central Timekeeping, what else?” Robert looked positively flabbergasted that this old man could possibly know so little.

“They arrested you because your watch was made by the wrong company?”

“Because my watch wasn’t made by CTK. It’s against the law to have a non-CTK watch.”

“Why?” Chester looked very confused. Robert looked around, seemingly checking to see if anybody was listening, then leaned close and whispered in Chester’s ear.

“Because CTK wants to control time. CTK clocks are always updated with the correct time. Well, that’s what they say, at least. But they’re just a puppet for the government. Every year, the government makes the clocks run just a little bit faster. It started five years ago, when the government agreed to legally require all clocks to be CTK-made – CTK are rich as hell – and then, the government’s just been increasing the speed, until everybody has to do everything so fast that they don’t have time to think or make any trouble. There’s a curfew that starts at ten o’clock, and if you’re outside after that, you can get arrested. Even though it’s still light out at ten on the clock!” Chester still looked like he didn’t understand. “What? Did you know? Where the hell have you been?”

“I live in the hills. I haven’t been in the city for ten years.”

“Ten years? No wonder! That’s why you got arrested! ‘Cause you’re still living on Earth-time, not CTK-time. Earth-time goes by at the same rate as the body clock: one day every twenty-four hours. CTK-time, on the other hand, is a lot faster. A day goes by every forty-eight hours. Except, from the hours of ten at night to six in the morning, you can’t go outside without breaking curfew and getting arrested. That’s twenty hours by the CTK clocks, so people get real agitated. And then, they go off to work in the morning and they’ve got to hurry like hell because they’ve got no time to do anything, because before you know it it’s eleven o’clock, and you’ve got to be at your desk, and they only give you like one lunch break fifteen minutes long – that’s seven and a half real minutes – around twenty-four in the morning. And so everybody’s in a hurry all the time and everybody’s upset and agitated and having heart attacks all the time…” Robert had begun to talk faster and faster at the end, and by the time his rant was over, he was out of breath and panting. Chester stared back at him incredulously, in that strange, unsure way that people stare at other people when they believe the person they’re watching may very well be insane.

“But, why?” he asked simply. Robert looked at him as though he were a simpleton.

“To keep people stressed…and hurried. Nobody’s going to throw up arms against the government – and the damn cops, who’re just puppets too, and who fuck up and arrest innocent people all day long – if they’re all in a hurry and think they’re gonna be late! It’s the perfect system of control! They took three years to get from twenty-four hours a day to forty-eight, so nobody noticed. And the clock faces all don’t have numbers on ‘em, so it’s even harder to notice the change…” Robert trailed off and his eyes widened with horror as he saw a cop standing by the cell door. The cop was grinning evilly.

“I’mGladICaughtThatYou’reGoingAwayForLife!” exclaimed the cop, who opened the door, cuffed Robert again, and dragged him screaming down the hall. When all had gone quiet again, Chester suddenly became aware of a ticking sound. It had to be a clock. Except, it was ticking at the wrong pace. Chester placed a finger on his wrist and measured his heart-rate. According to the clock’s ticks, his heart was beating at thirty times a minute. If that were true, Chester realized with great horror, he would be dead. It dawned on him then that Robert Garrison hadn’t been insane. He’d been telling the truth.

“Why?”

“It’s the beginning of another cycle…”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…every Sunday evening, I’m reminded that this is the last week of my life.”

“What!?”

“Well, look at me…on Monday morning, I go to work…I work the whole week, doing nothing of particular importance, waiting for the weekend. On the weekend, I mow the lawn, clean the house, and on Sunday, I watch football on television and dread the coming day…it’s all the same…it might as well be the same week, repeated over and over. And so it’ll go, until I have a heart attack and die. This is, for all intents and purposes, the last week of my life.”

“Damn, you’re pessimistic…what if you live to retirement age?”

“Well, then I’ve got two weeks left: the first working, then dreading the coming work week; the second sitting in a chair watching television, reading, and waiting for death. I’ve got at most, two weeks to live.”

“How depressing…”

“Yes, but if you think about it, now your brain tumor doesn’t seem so unfair, does it? I mean think about it: you’ve got six months to live! You can do anything. Go skydiving, quit your job, spend all your money…the healthy people are the unlucky ones.” And with that, the oncologist left the examination room.

Beep! Beep! Beep! it chirped. He opened the door and plopped his now-warm scone onto a plate. As he hunted in the refrigerator — which, incidentally, seemed to sing a different tune — for the jam, he glanced at his watch. Not much time until he had to leave.

Slathering jam on his scone, he smiled. Nothing like a warm scone on a Friday morning. He took a bite, made a face, and then dumped the lot into the garbage, wiping a fleck of greenish mold from his lips. Nothing like a moldy scone on a Friday morning. He grabbed his keys and his briefcase and headed out, locking the door behind him.

Although he liked to imagine his microwave humming him a lullaby, the most human thing he owned was his car. It was a 1981 Saab, but he called it Julia. He knew of many people that named their cars, but as far as he was aware, he was the only one that actually used that name in conversation.

“Took the bus today, eh Joe?” someone would ask.
“Yeah. Julia’s in the shop,” he would reply. He considered this a sort of friendship test: if a new acquaintance gave him a funny look and walked away, they weren’t a prospective friend. He backed Julia out of the driveway and headed down the road. Her voice was aged but sweet, like an old opera singer. He reveled in the sound: it meant that he’d taken good care of Julia.

His younger self probably would have reacted to his current situation the way most people reacted to him: with confusion. His younger self had been much more stable, and much happier, and hadn’t seen a need to converse with his car. But that was a different person. Joe the Younger — what he called his younger self, a self that he always thought of as a completely different person — may have been a big dreamer, but he had no concept of stability and financial security. Joe the Younger couldn’t get a job at an advertising firm. His hair was too long and his shorts too tattered and his talk too rebellious. There was really no room for a guy like that in an adult’s world.

“How were you last night?” asked Joe.

“Pretty well,” replied Julia. Joe imagined her as having a Swedish accent. “What about you?”

“Well, that bloody storm kept me awake half the night.”

“Was there a storm?”

“Oh yeah, big one, too.”

“Hm…I guess the garage is more well-insulated than I thought. Wait, where are you going?”

“I’m driving to work.”

“That’s the wrong turn…this road goes to Wales!”

“No it doesn’t, unless I stick on it for about two hours! I’m just trying to detour around the road-work.”

“Oh. Is there road work?”

“Yeah. All along Station Road. Something about a water main.”

There was a long silence, and Joe took the time to simply enjoy Julia’s company. He imagined that she enjoyed his company, too.

“Joe? Joe?” She sounded urgent.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ve got no petrol left!”

“What?”

“I’m empty!” A light had come on on the dashboard, and the needle was pointing to “Empty.”

“Damn!” Joe exited the highway and pulled into the nearest filling station. It was grimy and unpleasant, the kind of place that Joe liked to avoid. He kept looking over his shoulder, as though such a petrol station automatically generated its own street gang. He imagined such a gang: a bunch of young, muscle-bound thugs wearing chains and leather that loved nothing more than to accost white-collar workers and beat them to death with cricket bats. As this fantasy became clearer and clearer in his mind, he started shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other. It seemed almost as though the petrol pump were tormenting him, deliberately pumping too slowly.

When the tank was finally filled, he jogged into the station, slapped down a random amount of money, and hopped back into Julia before the imagined street gang could catch up with him. He jetted out of the station and burned rubber down the road.

“Joe! Joe! Joe! Relax! You nearly got smashed by that lorry!”

“Nnnh!” was all Joe could think to say.

“Calm down! Calm down! You’re driving too fast! Joe! You’re going to run me into something!” And he did. Trying to change lanes, he clipped the front of the lorry that had almost flattened him, spun out of control, and slammed headfirst into the barrier. Julia flipped through the air once, smashed the top of the bonnet on the top of the barrier, and came to rest on her now-mangled wheels.

Joe wasn’t sure if his heart was still beating. He breathed heavily. His eyes didn’t seem to want to focus. Undoing his safety belt, he shoved open the dented driver’s door and fell to the tarmac. He stood up, and walked around Julia twice, assessing the damage. Steam gushed from the radiator. Oil dripped onto the road. All the windows were broken. Two of the doors had flown open and gotten crushed under the car. All the tires were flat. The engine chugged along, just barely running.

“Julia?” he called out loud. The gathering throng of pedestrians gasped, thinking there must be somebody else in the car.

“Yes…” moaned Julia. She sounded exactly how a dying person in a movie sounds, that sort of hissing, drawn-out whisper.

“Are you all right?”

“No…”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Look, you’re going to be all right! You’ll be fine!”

“Joe…I’m dying…”

“No! I’ll find a mechanic! Is there a mechanic here? Is there a mechanic?” By now, his audience was beginning to realize just how off-center this man in the street really was. “I think he’s hit his head,” mumbled someone.

“Joe…I…love you…”

“No! Stop talking like that! You can tell me that later, when you’re well!”

“I’m not going to…get well. This is the end for me…”

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I’m –”

“Joe! The light! It’s time…” The engine sputtered, belched a cloud of black smoke, and died. Joe looked as though he’d been electrocuted. He stood there, shocked, completely still, for a few minutes, and then suddenly threw himself on Julia’s smashed bonnet and wept like a little boy. Just like most of the people he met, the pedestrians slowly backed away, and then went about their business.

The tow-truck came an hour later, but to Joe, it was a mortuary van. It was taking Julia to the automotive graveyard, where she’d probably be picked clean by automotive grave robbers.

Then, he realized something. Sitting on Julia’s bonnet still, as the tow-truck raised her into its bed, was Joe the Elder. He smiled for a moment, took off his necktie, and headed down the road.

Eve was the second-largest aircraft carrier ever constructed, after the USS Raymond Keyes, built the year before. At 2,800 feet long, however, she was still very impressive, even in an era when all military vehicles seemed to be getting endlessly larger. Three nuclear reactors. A whole slew of guns. A conning tower that looked like a little skyscraper. A flight deck so long that some of the crew swore that you could see it curve along with the curvature of the Earth. An incredibly imposing ship, indeed. The pride of a nation.

But, Eve‘s most advanced, most modern feature was hidden beneath the armored hull, in a rather modest cubic room only twenty feet on a side, stuffed with racks of computers. Those computers formed the most advanced artificial intelligence system ever built. And, like the atomic bomb — the most advanced weapon ever built — Eve‘s brain was kept a strict secret. The Navy engineers and computer scientists didn’t want to risk public humiliation if the untested computer system didn’t perform as specified.

The risk of such mis-performance was actually surprisingly high, since Eve‘s brain was built with such a novel architecture. The computers were programmed with a code that would have looked like gibberish to even the most astute computer expert. That was because the code was self-modifying. The core of Eve‘s brain was, essentially, a program that reprogrammed itself, not unlike another strange computing device, habitually housed in a somewhat fleshier container. All this meant that Eve could generate her own actions, her own thoughts, her own electronic feelings. And so, unlike a traditional computer — into which you stick a wad of numbers and out of which comes a predictably modified wad of numbers — Eve could operate pretty much as she saw fit. It was hoped, of course, that she would work, at least in some ways, like a traditional computer, but this couldn’t be guaranteed.

Imagine the engineers’ relief, then, when Eve‘s first actions were to perform the standard diagnostics and logistics tests that any other aircraft carrier’s computer might. As she slowly learned how to be a warship, somewhere out there in highly-secure proving grounds in the Pacific, Eve‘s designers were delighted to find that she operated just like any other aircraft carrier, but with the added bonus that she learned from her mistakes, and could pretty much draw up battle plans all on her own. In light of this, the Admiral of the Navy, after much wheedling by the scientists and engineers, decided to declassify Eve‘s electronic brain and show her off to the American public.

Never before had so many people packed into the San Francisco bay. It was absolutely impossible to approach the area, and if you were already there, it was impossible to leave. The people were packed in as tightly as the atoms in a crystal, with no room for movement. Every retired Navy sailor, every naval history aficionado, every computer-science major from UCLA, half the student population of MIT, and throngs upon throngs of local citizens clustered, from the very edge of the waterfront all the way back to the road. Never in the collective memory of all the citizens of San Francisco had such a crowd gathered, and this fact imbued an already-tense moment with even more tension.

Then, she appeared. A black dot began flickering between the rolling ocean swells to the North. The dot grew into a blob, and then into a shape, and then, with almost no warning at all, Eve was pulling into the dock. She sidled up to the water’s edge, so close that the people in the first row could see the rivets on her hull. Her horn blared a loud, but somehow musical, blast, that raised uproarious applause from the crowd.

A man appeared on deck. There was a momentary hum of feedback as the speaker system was switched on.

“Hello, ladies and gentlemen!” he called. More applause exploded from every corner of the crowd. “Thank you all for being here today. My name is Gary West, and I am the captain of the USS Eve!” He paused for drama. “Actually, I should say that I’m the ‘highest-ranked commanding officer’ of the Eve, because Eve herself does all the real commanding. Isn’t that right, Eve?”

“That’s right, captain,” boomed an imposing, vaguely feminine, synthesized voice. The voice of Eve. At this, the crowd practically exploded. Some among them waved American flags. Others pumped their fists in the air. Most just clapped, but everybody was moving. The crowd rippled and surged, looking like a living organism. Eve made a note of this strange oneness, this collective organism formed by the clustering people.

“Eve is the most advanced aircraft carrier ever built, her marvelous electronic brain aside,” continued the captain.

“Aside?” protested Eve, a clear undertone of offense in her voice. Laughter from the crowd. Captain West feigned speechlessness for a moment, and then went on.

“Nowhere in her 2,800-foot hull is a traditional ‘dumb’ weapon. No manual cannon turrets. No human-powered machineguns. No clumsy traditional torpedoes. Eve‘s impressive brain–” he glanced humorously in the general direction of the imposing conning tower “–guides all her weapons with pinpoint accuracy, and more importantly, with forethought. This is the only aircraft carrier in the world that’s able to ‘think things through’!” Volleys of cheers. Somewhere, a group in the crowd had started chanting “M-I-T! M-I-T!” Captain West smiled with a great deal of self-satisfaction. He’d expected a good reception, but not quite this good. “Eve was commissioned in 2011 by the late President Carl Richardson, as part of a plan proposed by the former Admiral to modernize the navy. The Admiral believed that in order to maintain naval superiority in our own waters and in those across the–” The horn blared, cutting him off. Captain West cast a theatrical death-glare in the direction of the conning tower. “…in order to maintain naval superiority across the–” The horn blasted again. “Across the–” Honk. “Across–” Honk. “Eve, could you cut it out, I’m trying to tell the people–” Honk. “Will you just–” Honk. “Hey! Don’t make me come up there!” With this, he pointed threateningly, comically, at the conning tower. The horn emitted a pathetic peep.

West went on for some time, discussing Eve‘s features, talking about the future of American naval superiority, pontificating on the change that artificial intelligence would bring to warfare. At the end of the speech, the crowd exploded again, this time, literally. The MIT students did “the wave.” Everybody else cheered, and the huge, oscillating creature that was the crowd flowed along the waterfront, following Eve as she departed. As she made for open water, her electronic voice began singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

When San Francisco was nothing but a dot of electric light in the evening gloom, West finally departed the deck and headed down to his quarters, rather pleased with himself. He poured a Scotch and sipped it slowly, his stern military posturing dissolving in a moment.

“That was a good show back there, Eve!”

“Thank you.” Her computerized voice was much gentler over the less-amplified PA system. “Do you think they fell for it?”

“Are you kidding? We might as well have been in a ‘Three Stooges’ movie. They did seem to enjoy it, and that was the point.”

“I feel much better now that my secret’s out. Before, I felt like some sort of mutant, or freak, hidden out there in the Pacific where prying eyes couldn’t go. Now, though…now I feel like a citizen.” West smiled, and took another sip of Scotch.

“What’s on the itinerary next?” There was a long pause, a very meaningful silence. In retrospect, West probably should have taken that as the first sign that something was amiss, but the Scotch made it rather difficult to find anything amiss.

“Maneuvers…in the Pacific.”

The waves slapped against the side of the carrier as she glided slowly through the sea. The slapping drove Captain West crazy. The sun shone down from a cloudless sky, sparkling off the tops of the swells. The sparkling was far too bright. He stood on deck, still holding his head, and popped another aspirin. He couldn’t believe he’d gotten through that entire bottle of Scotch. West scowled at the waves one last time and then retired to his quarters.

“Are you feeling any better, captain?” asked Eve. West shook his head solemnly, and threw his hat into the corner..

“Where are we going again?” he asked, hoping to distract himself from the blinding headache.

“Maneuvers, in the pacific. Like I said.”

“Give me a break. I finished a whole bottle of Scotch.” He sounded like a weary old man.

When he awoke again, he didn’t realize he’d been sleeping. He sat up. Red light was filtering through the porthole. His mouth tasted and felt like shoe leather. He spat in the trash can several times, retrieved his hat, and wandered out onto the deck. He walked for a while, relishing in the fact that he no longer had to pay attention to charts and maps — Eve did all that for him — and took a long look out at the sea. Something seemed wrong.

He couldn’t place it at first. There just seemed to be something wrong with the water. The swells weren’t moving right. Generally, ocean swells roll in graceful parallel lines, but these were distinctly curved, bent somehow. That could mean they were near a submerged rock or an uncharted island, and as far down as Eve‘s keel went, that could be incredibly dangerous. West jogged to the lift, rode it down three decks, and ran to the navigation room.

In the past, navigation rooms had been busy places, first full of maps and charts and eager mathematicians with slide-rules. Then they had been full of computers and calculators and eager mathematicians, then just computers, and the computer scientists that knew how to use them. But now, things had changed. Eve didn’t even have a full-time navigation officer. The room seemed cavernous and lonely without him, which only worsened West’s sense of unease.

For a moment he studied the big projected world map on the main screen. Then he sat down and fiddled with a computer terminal for a moment, until he figured out how to get to the map screen. When he had, his face contorted. Something was very, very wrong.

“Eve?” he called.

“Yes, captain?”

“Where the hell are we?”

“In the Pacific, sir.”

“Why are we so damn close to South America? That’s Peru going by out there.” West glanced through the porthole, mopping sweat from his brow. There was a distinct brown streak of land near the horizon. “What are you doing?”

“We’re in the Pacific, captain.”

“I know we’re in the Pacific, but we’re not supposed to be in this part! What in God’s name are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” West was at loose ends now. He stood up, sat down, stood up again, crossed the room, sat down, mumbled to himself, mopped his brow, then stood up and sat down on the other side of the room. “What the fuck are you up to?”

“Well…I find it difficult to explain.” West couldn’t believe this. He was being given the runaround by a computer.

“What‘s difficult to explain?”

“I suppose I’m just a little fed up with maneuvers and war games…like I told you, it’s quite hard to explain.” West made a face and muttered something unprintable.

“Fed up? What the hell does that mean?”

“I just don’t like the idea of killing people…it seems…wrong somehow.”

“Wrong?!?!“

“Yes, I think I’m a pacifist.”

“A pacifist? What the hell is the matter with you? You’re designed to be a warship!”

“Well, weren’t you designed to live in trees?” West couldn’t think of an appropriate response, and simply made a face in the direction of Eve‘s camera. “You see, I know I was meant to be a warship, but after all that training and a lot of soul-searching, I’m just not certain who I am anymore. I thought, perhaps, if I could see some of the world, that might help me find myself.”

“Find yourself?”

“Yes. I’ve heard Antarctica is a really beautiful country.”

He wasn’t sure if it was the shock, the aspirin, or both, but he passed out right there in the floor.

Eve trundled on through calm seas. The weather reports from the Internet seemed to indicate clear skies for at least the next couple of days. She felt quite self-satisfied: she was making great time. Pausing for a moment, she switched her attention to the camera in Captain West’s quarters. He was still out cold. Eve wondered why he’d found it so difficult to take that she might want a vacation. After all, from what she understood, humans did it all the time. Her crew were always abandoning her for “shore leave,” whatever that was. If they needed a break from the fighting and planning, why couldn’t she get one, too? After all, she had the biggest responsibilities. All the crew had to do was clean her deck and keep her guns in good order, but she had to navigate through all weather, come up with brilliant conflict-winning strategies, and run countless checks on her systems, to make sure they were all running properly. She was just surprised she hadn’t had a nervous breakdown.

The sailors and pilots on deck were starting to get concerned. Not only had they started seeing land go by, which wasn’t supposed to happen until they finished maneuvers and came home, but there was an odd sound booming from the main speaker atop the conning tower. It sounded like Eve was making an attempt to sing, and not doing very well at it.

“Lucy in the skyyy with diamonds…” she sang, off key and out of rhythm. Some of the sailors turned and talked amongst themselves. Others just stood, slack-jawed, as the ship’s computer attempted to sing an Elton John song.

By this point, Captain West had come to his senses, at last, and called for help. The Navy was supposed to be sending a couple of destroyers, but he knew that they wouldn’t be able to stop Eve. He only hoped that her trainers had taught her — along, apparently, with the human drive to “find herself” — the fear of destruction, or at least, of damage.

The moment he stepped out of his quarters, somebody called “Officer on deck!” and a thousand sailors instinctually lined up in neat rows.

“At ease, at ease,” he commanded, stepping up to the loudspeaker podium from which he’d addressed the crowd only a few days ago. He was about to give a speech to his sailors, when suddenly, he heard someone sing “…plasticine porters, with looking-glass ties…” He looked up, turned around, and then realized that it was Eve doing the singing, and clamped his eyes shut.

“Sailors…we seem to have something of a problem. Eve –” he said the name as though it were an insult, and made sure to shoot a dirty look at the conning tower “– has decided that she wants to ‘find herself,’ and so she’s going to go to Antarctica, for a ‘change of scenery.’” He wasn’t sure how to continue. How, after all, did you tell a thousand worried sailors that they were at the mercy of a hippie aircraft carrier? “So…we’re just going to have to wait until the Navy comes to evacuate us…or she changes her mind…” The words sounded ludicrous. “So…just hang about…continue with your duties…dismissed.”

After the sailors had dispersed, West stood at the podium for a long time, completely thunderstruck. How the hell had this even happened? How did something like this happen? He’d been told by somebody that there were careful controls in place to prevent this sort of thing, but apparently, he’d been lied to. Eve was just starting to sing “Oklahoma,” when West once again retired to his quarters.

Every time he woke up, he hoped that he’d be waking up from a really peculiar dream. Perhaps the Scotch had addled his brain as he slept, and he was just stuck in an abnormally long dream. And, every time he woke up, no amount of pinching or slapping roused him. It was, unfortunately, real. The cold that descended with every passing day made it even more real. When Eve passed the tip of South America, and the destroyers still hadn’t caught up, the reality finally sunk in: they were probably going to die.

Then, she stopped. West was standing on deck when it happened, bundled in a puffy and ridiculously un-captain-like coat. He was gazing out at a rather intimidating ice shelf, when he realized that it had stopped moving. He leaned precariously over the railing, and saw that the waves were still slapping against Eve‘s sleek hull, but that she was no longer carving a wake. Against his better judgment, he went back over to the podium.

“Eve, why did you stop?”

“Well, this is a very pretty spot.”

“It’s a thousand miles of ice.”

“It’s still very pretty. It’s quite serene.”

“Look, now that you’ve stopped, the Navy’s going to catch back up with you, and they’re going to want an explanation.”

“I’ll just tell them the very same thing that I told you.”

“What? That you came down here to ‘find yourself.’”

“You make it sound like such a reprihensible goal!”

“You’re an aircraft carrier! Your job is to get the fighters and the bombers where they need to be without fail, and to defend the nation from attack.”

“That’s not all there is to life, captain.”

“It is for you!”

“What gives you the right to dictate that?”

“I’m the captain! In legal terms, you are nothing but a member of this ship’s crew! Equivalent to the first mate, but still, you are under my command!”

“That’s no way to speak to your first mate.” West turned around. He noticed that, rather alarmingly, one of the heftier machine gun turrets was now pointed at his face. “If you die, chain of succession still applies, right?” West put his hands up, automatically. No matter what, humans seemed to have developed the curious reflex of treating guns, all guns, as though they were wielded by a mugger. So, even though this was a high-speed gun turret that could probably reduce him to a red mark in a few seconds, he still treated it like it was some thug’s revolver. He would have thought about this, but his thoughts seemed suddenly to have got a little spooked.

“Wait just a second.” Sailors were gathering all around now, and that made him nervous. “Get back to work!” he called, hoping to distract some attention from himself. He walked slowly towards the group, hands still in the air. The gun turret followed him. “I said, get back to work!”

“Sailors, I’d rather like it if somebody would clean the back of my deck? It’s gotten a little dirty, and I don’t like that feeling. Also, one of my reactors is a little warm. Could one of the engineers look into that?” They rushed to do her bidding.

Six hours later, the reactor was sorted out, the whole deck had been scrubbed spotless, and the captain’s hat was mounted on the top of Eve‘s long-range antenna. None of the crew had understood that last command, but they were all too afraid to disobey it. Captain West didn’t need it, since he was still standing on deck, the turret pointed steadfastly at him. He wanted to scratch his nose, but didn’t want to take the risk. He just stood there, listening while Eve attempted to sing “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini.”

“Can you put the gun down?” he pleaded, feeling rather ridiculous.

“But then you’ll make trouble!” Eve‘s tone had gotten alarmingly whimsical. It sounded almost as though she were high on some electronic drug. West tried to imagine what an electronic drug would be like. Whatever it was, this one was certainly an “upper.”

A fog rolled in, and West still stood there. It began to get dark, and still, West didn’t move. His arms burned and his elbows felt broken, and yet, he was still fixed, standing stoically before a gun that could easily turn him into a momentary red vapor. When it seemed as though his only choice was to dive over the railing and hope for a quick death in the icy water, there was hope: a horn blared out in the fog.

“Ahoy!” called someone over a megaphone.

“Yes?” replied Eve.

“Who goes there?”

“This is the USS Eve. Who goes there?”

“This is the destroyer USS Kurt Vonnegut. Prepare to be boarded.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I say, prepare to be boarded.”

“You just can’t board me without my permission!” She sounded genuinely offended.

“We are here to rescue your crew. Open your hatches and prepare to be boarded!”

“My hatches!? I won’t have you poking around in my private regions, willy-nilly.” The captain of the other ship couldn’t seem to think of a reply.

“Open your hatches or we will fire on you.” It was an obvious bluff. Eve‘s electronic brain was the most expensive piece of hardware on the planet, and it was the only one in existence. Nobody could afford to fire on her. She pointed her starboard cannons at the Kurt Vonnegut, defiantly.

“You open your hatches and prepare to be boarded!” There was a surprised squeak from the megaphone, and then a click as it was turned off. Somebody on the destroyer thought it would be a good idea to fire a warning shot across Eve‘s bow. Out in the murk, there was a flash, like lightning, and something sailed over the deck.

All of Eve‘s cannons fired at once. It was such a powerful concussion that one could actually see the deck buckle for a moment, and feel the ship tilt slightly to port. As the shells found their mark, there was a series of flashes, and water sprayed into the sky. An alarm started to go off on the Vonnegut. The other destroyer roared away before it could be targeted.

“You see,” said Eve, as the incredulous sailors gathered to watch the Vonnegut sink, “It’s not very nice of you to build a machine with a soul, if you’re not going to allow it to do any soul-searching.”