Pulling The Dragon's Tail (4 page)

Pacing around the tiny room, he tried to gather
up the strength to continue. The small three foot square window
permitted a view of the Hudson River from ten stories up. Looking
from the most extreme angle he could just make out the Statue of
Liberty to the south. From there his thoughts soared out over the
Atlantic Ocean, back to the sanctuary he had emerged from just a
week earlier. “Oh, how I wish I’d never left,” he moaned. But now
that harbor of safety seemed a million miles away. Then his
thoughts turned to Wakely. Still keenly feeling her death, he
fought back a wave of tears.

The forced separation from Dugan was another
sharp psychological blow; one more absurd twist since his arrival
back in the North American Union. With the persuasive power of
psychobiologist Campbell Devereaux and reinforced by the artificial
intelligence known as CLUES, he was diagnosed with psychosis with
delusions of grandeur. Now only one hour separated him from late
twenty-first century medicine’s most effective way to treat mental
illness: the Neuro Shock machine.

The polite, bemused smiles of the staff had
reinforced the subtle message that he was crazy. Dr. Devereaux had
been more to the point. “Mr. Kristopher. Nobody believes that
you’re ninety-one years old. You have no wrinkles and very quick
reflexes. You’re thirty-five and not a day older. Neuro Shock is
the treatment of choice. It
will
end this unproductive and
useless delusion, and you’ll be able to get on with the rest of
your life.” She forced a half-smile through gritted teeth before
turning on her heels and walking away. Her Cheshire cat expression
still haunted him.

Angrily, he muttered, “Keagan was right; she is
Dr. Devastate. Why is it so hard for her to believe me?” He mulled
over the key strategy to obtain his freedom: showing Dr. Devereaux
convincing evidence that he held a secret to her past. But to do
that, he had to get her attention.

After a few deep breaths, he returned to his
bed. He sat down and thoughtfully stroked two days’ growth of light
brown stubble with his right hand. With his left, he held the palm
sized puzzle, glanced at the clock, and set to work. Fifty-five
minutes remained until his appointment with that dreaded shock
treatment. He took another deep breath. Exhibiting an attitude of
hard-earned patience, one that belied his apparent youthfulness, he
once again spun the multi-faceted turrets of the puzzle.

Several minutes later, Keagan and Jentry Landis,
a female psychiatric assistant, were making rounds. “Ya’ ever seen
a more fixed, bizarre delusion?” Keagan intoned, keenly observing
how Nate extended each fingertip of his left hand and touched the
corresponding one on the right. With a burgeoning disgust, he saw
Nate’s bowed head. Keagan’s rapt fixation continued as the patient
extended his gaze upward, the golden Church of Abraham medallion
swinging slightly against his glistening neck.

“Church of Abraham believers certainly have an
elaborate prayer ritual,” said the perky tech, her short auburn
hair surrounding a healthy-looking tan. “I think that each finger
represents a traditional religion. I can certainly understand the
attraction of CHOFA. Of course, a lot has to be accepted by faith;
and I don’t know if anyone can really prove that a Super Techno
Being exists in Andromeda, visited the Abraham of the Bible, let
alone that he visited Winifred Bakila.” She glanced over at Keagan,
noting the slight twittering of the reddish moustache. “Why are you
so upset? He has a right to believe in whatever God he wants
to.”

“No, he—yes, he does,” came the reply through
gritted teeth.
She knows better than to bring this up.

Jentry continued, “I’m fascinated by the
seamlessness of his delusion and the brain scan anomalies. Maybe
the latest techno drugs fried him. He’s an odd bird all
right—they’re all odd birds—but there’s something else about him…”
Her voice trailed off.

“What do you mean?” queried the veteran tech.
Staff psychobiologists often included Keagan in treatment team
decisions, their respect showing for his many years of experience.
Usually he minced no words, but with Jentry he often found himself
being flattered and a bit flustered by this attractive intelligent
woman.

“Well,” she continued, “think of all the
delusional tales you’ve heard over the years.” Deferring to
Keagan’s experience was always a good move. “People believe they’re
Einstein with a perpetual motion machine or Princess Diana rescuing
the world. Remember all the extraterrestrials in human form, or
women who insisted they were carrying an alien baby? Now paranoia
over technology has led to beliefs that deadly computer viruses are
implanted below the skin ready to be activated, or their brain is
wirelessly connected to a global supercomputer. So it’s about time
for immortality beliefs to emerge. After all, genetic therapy has
pushed average life expectancy to almost a century.” She paused and
wrinkled her brow. “Except for…”

“What?” he asked gruffly, clumsily concealing
his contempt for her useless speculations
. Stay under my
tutelage long enough and you’ll discover just
how
pathetic
these damn psychotics are.

“Well, what if there’s a kernel of truth to his
story?” She plowed ahead despite Keagan’s annoyed look. “What if he
really is ninety-one?”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Maybe I’ve placed too much faith in humanity,
but I believe that someday we will live much longer
and
maintain youthful vigor. Mr. Kristopher’s story, true or not, gives
me hope”.

Jentry had touched the edge of Keagan’s deepest
convictions. He was one of millions of people who cynically
believed that humanity could not save itself, that technology
eventually would lead to annihilation, and that humans were
tinkering in forbidden territory. Keagan also believed in a god who
was soon to administer a broad swath of punishment against
humanity. But with the hard set jaw slowly agitating, he quickly
changed the subject. ”What time you got?”

“8:45.”

“Only forty-five minutes until his first
treatment. Look at him, so psychotic that he’s blindly working on a
stupid puzzle.”

“Well, Keagan, you know what they say. You can
only judge a robot by it’s mother board.” They turned down the
hallway. The profound wisdom in that saying was certainly
applicable to Keagan. She had correctly identified both Nate’s
concern over the upcoming treatment as well as Keagan’s
unreasonable antipathy toward this Church of Abraham believer. Her
carefully selected genes for high intelligence and astounding
beauty were proving to be quite a combination. Jentry was well on
her way to what her parents hoped would be great success.

“Father,” prayed Nate silently, “give me
strength. Guide my hands. Help me to do Your will, not mine. Help
me accept why you put me here. In the name of Father Abraham. Let
it be so.” Then he straightened his tall frame and returned to the
stubborn puzzle, reassuring himself that the most important step in
his plan had already occurred: the delivery of the octagonal
puzzle. The combinations, mysteriously though, were in utter
disarray. He couldn’t help but blame Keagan, who had personally
brought the puzzle to him early that morning.
The man is one
scary dude.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash
of light. A second quick illumination caught his attention. Still
another slightly longer burst followed that. The turrets of his own
mind spun around. “Short and long flashes, short and long
flashes…Morse code?”

His heart leaped with relief.

“D-U-G-A-N,” he interpreted the Morse coded
message.

“My faithful canine—never should have doubted
you!” He rushed to the small window, clapping his hands with joy.
The flashes of light continued to penetrate his eyes, emanating
from the top of a building about two-hundred meters away to the
northwest of the hospital.

Embedded sensors in the wall took note of this
aberrant behavior. Cameras mounted across all angles of the room
zoomed in on the patient’s excited antics. This information was
passed on to the staff at the nurse’s station. The charge nurse
looked on in bemusement and then dutifully passed this information
into the CLUES system. The artificial intelligence program, in
turn, downloaded this latest piece of data. It only confirmed what
all staff including Dr. Campbell Devereaux knew for certain: Nate
Kristopher suffered from delusions of grandeur and was in need of
Neuro Shock to break the psychosis gripping him.

* * * * * *

“Pom daido woth epi abot, sned,” the computer
companion robot had spoken to Nate last night at seven p.m. in a
carefully designed phone call.

“Foto ilt pom daido woth, clobo poz,” Nate had
replied in confirmation. He was constantly amazed at the Computer
Companion Robot’s intellectual capabilities and how it was able to
formulate contingency plans. But that was also exactly how Nate had
planned it. Dugan, as a new breed of artificially intelligent
machines capable of some self-understanding and self-modification,
was designed to grow and develop. But neither Dugan nor Nate had
ever come up against CLUES, the Computer Counselor: Learning,
Understanding, and Evaluation of Systems.

He concentrated on the flashes of light coming
from Dugan.

“I-S-I-T-S-O-L-V-E-D,” was the next Morse coded
message.

Shoot. How’m I going to communicate with
him?
He quickly turned around to explore the contents of his
room. The standard hospital bed-bolted to the floor; a table and
chair stood on the other side of the bed, and beyond that-the
bathroom. He glared at the ubiquitous monitors. Then he muttered
aloud, just enough for the ears of CLUES, “I won’t let cyber-sleuth
win this one.”

He resolved to be non-verbal in his frantic
search
. Let CLUES make sense of me now,
he challenged,
glancing and posturing in the direction he believed the monitors
were mounted
. At least they can’t read my thoughts.
He
shuddered, for he knew indeed, that science was closing in on
accurately interpreting the neuronal patterns that comprise human
mental activity.

He checked through the drawers of the light
brown dresser beside his bed, then rustled through the suitcase on
top of the small table. Inside the tiny bathroom he found the
desired item—a small emergency flashlight hidden under the vanity.
“Ugh, it looks ancient!” He pushed the button in the center of the
plastic tube. Nothing! Turning it over, he remembered that these
pre-2040 lights just needed a shake to activate the long-life
battery. He slapped it against the palm of his fumbling, sweaty
hand.

Thank you, Father Abraham, it works! Now
let’s give Mr. CLUES something to report on!
Rushing back to
the window, he sent a message to Dugan,
“N-E-E-D-S-O-L-U-T-I-O-N-T-O-P-U-Z.” He stopped, fearing the
flashlight was already growing dimmer.

Tense moments followed as Nate awaited the
reply. Then it came. R-19-X-42-M-29. Suddenly the flashes stopped
as the sun disappeared behind a cloud, rendering the mirror
useless.
Cursed global warming, too many clouds, too much rain.
Do I wait for the sun to return?

Shaking the flashlight vigorously he sent a
message back. He hoped the CCR’s eyes would still be powerful
enough to decipher the fading flashlight. ”W-R-I-T-E-I-T.”

Millions of humans had welcomed robotic implants
into their bodies. Additionally, there were transhumans who not
only welcomed the implants, but sought to become one with the
machines. While detesting the transhuman movement, he had to admit
he was part-machine himself. His implanted dataport microcomputer
was also installed with a wireless CCR port to communicate with
Dugan, as well as a netphone controlled with wrist implants.
‘Monitor glasses had been installed underneath the skin next to his
eyes. The signals from these glasses were projected directly in
front of his vision, allowing for seamless reception for Net-based
work, gaming, calling, texting, emailing, or for anything else that
traditional scroll computer screens had been used for in the
earlier days of computer technology. The imbedded wrist sensors
sent wireless signals to his dataport system, essentially serving
as a mouse. Nate also had installed a second invaluable tool next
to his eyes: telescopic magnification.

He stared in the direction of Dugan’s rooftop
location. In a few seconds the effects began to grow. The small
computer chip located behind his right eye increased the
magnification two times, four times, twenty times, and finally two
hundred times higher than normal vision.

Blurry patches of buildings swirled at the
periphery of his vision, and the rooftop zoomed into view. Scanning
around the rooftop, he located Dugan who was already displaying the
paper produced from his internal printer. There it was!
L-8-P-43-B-12.

That was all Nate needed. “G-O-T-I-T,” he
signaled back with the nearly dead flashlight. Calmly he committed
the precious answer to memory. Teasingly he said directly into a
camera monitor, “Blin waln guk zown!” and then flashed a toothy
smile.
In case CLUES is onto me, I’ve gotta throw it off the
scent.

He returned to the tri-level puzzle, which was
literally the brainchild of artificial intelligence.
Only a
computer brain could create this monster! And I’ve been hanging
around robotic AIs too long to think I can do it too!

In a sign of growing confidence, Nate chuckled
to himself. He had the solution to the toughest section, the
external octagonal part, with its unnerving twenty-six sides of
algorithms derived from pi. Upon completion of that, the octagonal
shell would fall neatly into two pieces, revealing the next layer,
a cube puzzle of simple letters and colors. Recalling the late
1900s version, he marveled again how robotic brains had created a
more challenging edition, and under Dugan’s tutelage Nate had also
conquered that.