📖 The Ghost of Emily - Chapter 12
In which seedy prospects gain solidity and cloudy vision gains hope.
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“Where’s the Poppy Seed bowl?” Marcus leaned over to Frank.
“I don’t know, mon ami? Do you suppose…?” Frank looked at Marcus with wide-eyed excitement.
“That Eli is actually here? God… I suppose it’s possible.”
They were seated in the front row of the ballroom, there for a quarter of an hour already, as the rest of the scientific team filed in and took their seats. Across the aisle Doctors Hullsworth and Epstein sat in perfect time with each other, as if they were joined at the hip. Hullsworth offered Marcus and Francois a regarding nod, which they returned.
Ally arrived and sat next to Marcus. Her finger brushed discreetly against his, and they shared a veiled smile of affection. Marcus looked around him to make sure they hadn’t been too overt, and finally caught Frank grinning at them.
Marcus leaned towards him. “Frank,” he whispered, “can you wipe that smile off your face, please? We’re trying to keep this on the down-low.”
“Ah, l’amour,” he whispered back, then turned his face forward in the room, his expression serious again.
“Hey, where’s the bowl?” asked Ally.
“That’s what we were just wondering. We think Eli might be here.”
“Here? You think?”
Marcus shrugged and looked over his shoulder to see the last of the scientists arriving, and the ballroom doors being closed.
“Daedalus Team!” came the voice of Eli over the loudspeakers, causing Marcus to jump in his seat. Eli emerged from the back corner of the room. The lights remained on. He was wearing a small headset microphone and a crisp black suit and tie as he stepped to the front. Marcus heard chairs and feet shuffling, as the scientists murmured to each other. The excitement was electric.
“It is a great pleasure to finally be here! We have some tremendous news today about the latest progress from our most promising ventures…”
“He’s really here!” Frank whispered to Marcus.
Marcus squinted as he studied Eli in front of him. He certainly looked real – of flesh and blood – but something felt off to Marcus. He closed his eyes fully and tuned in to the sounds.
He heard the slight buzz of the incandescent globes in the chandelier. He heard Frank’s breathing and Ally’s finger scratching at her leg. He heard the rubber of lab-shoes squeaking sporadically on the polished timber floor. But underneath it all, he heard something else. Something so soft.
He squeezed his eyes even more firmly shut. He diverted all of his concentration to that distant, underlying sound. He heard it clearly, and once he recognised it, the sound filled his entire consciousness for a moment.
Sixty-four Hertz!
He opened his eyes and saw Eli still pacing back and forth before him, gesticulating passionately as he spoke, looking as real as anyone else in the room. He leaned back to Frank. “He’s not here.”
“What?”
“That’s not Eli.”
“What do you…”
“Uh, no I mean… it is Eli, but it’s the RAG-DOS system. It’s not really him.”
Frank protested. “But look at…”
“Doctors Hamlin and Ernst. Is there something you’d like to share with everyone here?”
“No, Eli, sorry,” Frank mumbled, diffidently.
“Yes, Eli,” said Marcus.
“Well, out with it then,” smiled Eli, seemingly excited by the break in his own introductory speech.
“I don’t believe that you’re really here, Eli. This is another hologram.”
Eli pulled a condescending face and chuckled. Several of the scientists followed suit.
“Oh, come now, Doctor Hamlin. Look at me. Here in flesh and blood as any of you are. Surely you can see that!”
“I don’t believe you, sir.”
Eli looked serious. “Don’t you trust your eyes?”
“I trust my ears.”
“And what pray-do-tell can you hear?”
“I can hear the RAG-DOS emitters functioning.”
There was another murmur in the room. Eli squinted at Marcus, quizzically. “Is that so? Well, everyone, let’s have some silence please.”
The room fell deathly quiet.
Eli turned his head a few times, still squinting. “I don’t hear a thing. Do any of you?”
Marcus heard the brushing of many collars on skin behind him as the bulk of the team shook their heads.
“I’m sorry, Marcus, but no one else can hear anything. What is it that… look, come up here would you?” he gestured for Marcus to join him.
Marcus stepped forward, still studying Eli closely. As he drew nearer, he took off his glasses to gain better focus on his employer. He found no visual evidence to support his theory, but the sound persisted in his consciousness.
“What do you hear, exactly?”
“Sixty-four Hertz. It’s a constant sine wave, very low amplitude, and it’s been there since day one – but only ever when there’s a RAG-DOS hologram active. It’s quieter than before though. Very soft.”
Eli nodded, studying Marcus’s face.
“And do you see anything to correlate with your hypothesis?”
“No, you look perfectly real.”
Eli nodded gravely. He smiled and stared deeply into Marcus’s eyes. Something about his expression told Marcus that he was testing him.
Eli leaned closer to Marcus, and spoke more softly. “How far are you willing to go out on this limb now, Marcus Hamlin?”
Marcus continued to watch Eli’s face for clues. There was no malice. No resentment. Eli was clearly enjoying this whole exchange. Marcus was beginning to doubt himself, when Eli leaned closer still and whispered. “Trust yourself, Marcus.” Eli moved back, and nodded once at him.
With a surge of adrenaline through his body at his instantaneous decision, Marcus lunged forward and shoved his hands into the chest of Eli Wells with all the force he could muster. There was a collective gasp from the shocked onlookers as Eli’s body scattered into the air as billions of tiny particles of colour, forming a dust cloud around Marcus’s arms as they reached their apogee and pulled back. Eli’s head remained undisturbed as it floated, disembodied, above the scattering fragments of his body below. Within seconds, the pieces were pulled back in and regrouped as Eli’s full form. Once again, he looked as real as ever.
Eli laughed heartily. “Very good, Marcus, very good indeed! Please, sit down.”
Marcus joined Ally and Frank and they smiled at him with wonder, as he caught his breath and calmed himself from the thrill of the risk he had just taken.
“Doctor Hamlin was quite right. I am not with you; I am still in Nebraska. This is the newest upgrade to the RAG-DOS system. We’ve quadrupled the resolution of the Poppy Seeds, we’ve reduced the field emission noise – though, evidently not enough to fool the gifted of hearing like Doctor Hamlin – and we’ve introduced a new receptacle.” He reached out into the air beside him and moved his fingers as if typing commands into a keyboard – though none was visible. With a final keystroke, a tiny robot resembling a vacuum cleaner rolled out of the dark rear corner of the room and came to a halt next to Eli. “When I deactivate, Rover here will collect the seeds and spit them out again when required. As you can see, we’ve reached the point where the RAG-DOS projection is near perfect in its replication of three dimensional matter. The only tell, currently, is the inability to project audio directly from the projection, hence this ruse.” he said as he tore the headset off his ears and tossed them to his side, causing them to evaporate and vanish. “But, we are working on a solution to that issue. Now! On to the real business.”
Eli gave one more affirming nod to Marcus, then took a deep breath. “We’ve had a number of promising submissions in the last six months for hardware that may be sufficient to host a sentient entity. Most of them have proven to be dead ends. That’s okay, of course, that’s how we find our way. This last month however, one avenue has proven itself to be the most promising convergence of theory, philosophy, hardware, and software that… well, that the world has ever seen. I believe we are very close to the threshold. And for that, we can thank Doctors Hamlin and Ernst, and their team, for their incredible work! The next stage is the actual integration of these elements, to see how they get along. Marcus, well done. Your directives are approved.”
Marcus nodded in unmoved acknowledgement, though inside he felt an enormous relief. The burden of his philosophical concerns had now shifted to the man in command of this operation.
“I’ve reviewed the coding structure Ally Cole and her team have developed with your conceptual framework, and I am convinced that it is a sound basis for the instincts of our intelligence when she awakens.”
Marcus noted the certainty of Eli’s statement, which fell in line with his infallible optimism that he exuded at every meeting for the last three years. Or is it determinism? Marcus considered. It was a quality of tireless certainty and cheer that he noted in the burgundy-clad hotel staff members also.
Marcus simply nodded again, unsurprised at the outcome. Eli began slowly pacing while he spoke, so as to address the whole room as his inescapable voice penetrated their ears from all directions via the booming loudspeakers.
“And with our directives encoded, with the physical neural network showing full functionality within its tested limits, I can now announce to you the completion of our linguistics and personality program that will also be hardwired into the mind of Eve over the next few weeks.”
There was an excited murmur in the room. Marcus looked around and noted that the scientists he deemed as the most lazy and incompetent were nodding and mumbling with the most zealous enthusiasm.
“This is something that Doctors Epstein and Hullsworth have been working on their whole professional lives,” Eli went on, “and in the last three years, with the resources I have provided them - including the minds in this room - they have completed a model that...” he chuckled under his breath, “well... this program on its own almost fooled me when we ran it through the Turing test last week. Its official designation is the Hullsworth-Epstein Linguistics Operating System, or HELOS for short. But we’ve taken to calling him- uh, it, Andrew. It’s amazing. Switch it on!” he shouted out to the air above his head, his cry echoing for a long moment through the hall as it bounced off the high ceiling and wide walls repeatedly.
An un-amplified voice called back. “Okay, it’s on.”
Eli looked around at his scientists with a grin that reminded Marcus of the look of a child about to spring a long-conceived prank upon his siblings. Eli clapped his hands together and wrung them tightly, his grin widening.
“Okay! Let’s show you all, shall we? Hello, Andrew?” He called out, as if to a deity above him.
A gentle, masculine voice spoke back in an American accent. “Hello, Eli.”
There was a momentary hubbub in the room as many of the scientists moaned in excitement or whispered explanations to each other. Marcus sat silently, wondering how his colleagues could be so easily impressed. Or maybe they were just being obsequious in the presence of the man promising them gold.
“Andrew, I’m here with the whole Daedalus Project team, we can all hear you," continued Eli, speaking loudly and slowly as if to a child, while he slowly continued his examining scan of his team members’ faces.
“I’m glad, Eli. Hello everybody at the Daedalus Project," spoke the disembodied voice, warmly. The room burst into laughter, and then quickly settled.
“Andrew, do you know what you are?” asked Eli, his face more serious now.
“Yes. I am an adaptive linguistic analysis program devised by Doctors Hullsworth and Epstein of the Daedalus Project.”
Doctors Benjamin Hullsworth and George Epstein, two portly middle-aged men - who could have been mistaken for twins by their tendency to dress alike - sat side by side with arms folded, grinning like proud parents.
“And how do you know that’s what you are, Andrew?” asked Eli, squinting inquisitively.
“That information is stored in the biographic segment of my base code.”
“So somebody told you that?”
“I do not know. It is the information I found when I looked up your query.”
“Okay. Tell me about how you work.”
“Sure. I have the dictionaries of every human and computer language installed into my main framework. I have a very efficient processing algorithm that enables me to recognise language in sonic and written form and identify the language with its meaning, given the context of a conversation and the form of a sentence.”
“Very efficient, compared to what?” Eli’s face was cold and serious.
“Efficient compared to a human brain.”
Eli’s grin returned, and he began wagging his finger in the air, knowing that only the humans present could see it, not the machine he was conversing with.
“Was that a canned answer?”
“Eli, all of my answers are canned. I am a computer program.”
Eli nodded, with a resolute smile.
“Thanks, Andrew, I’ll speak to you soon. You can shut down now.”
“Okay Eli, have a nice day.”
There was a soft click as the voice of the computer disconnected, and Eli lowered his head back to the team. “Isn’t he charming? See what I mean!?” He gushed, opening his arms out from his body triumphantly. The scientists clapped, obeying the well-established tradition of these meetings.
“George, Ben...” he said, his hands outstretched towards Doctors Epstein and Hullsworth, “thank you!”. The applause continued until Eli waved his hands downward as if to conduct his choir to hush. “So you can see that Andrew is not self-aware or conscious, but the program is designed to communicate with humans very effectively. He’s very personable! So personable that I’m already thinking of him as a him!” He laughed to himself. The room followed his lead.
“But we are not all the way there, yet. I believe that with Andrew’s program installed as the communications interface into the physical brain developed by Doctors Hamlin and Ernst, and Miss Cole, we may just leap the threshold we’ve been waiting at.
“The integration of these programs will take months, if not years, and that is what I want everyone of you to turn your attention to from here on. All other projects and avenues are hereby suspended.
“George and Ben, you guys have earned a break. Take a few days off if you like, and then report to Miss Cole to begin integrating your programs.
“Everyone else, make yourselves available to Doctor Hamlin as he coordinates the integration and testing from here on.” He stopped turning, clapped his hands together once more. “That will be all. See you next week!”
A grinding cacophony filled the hall as the assembly of scientists stood in staggered rhythms and their chairs were pushed around the polished floor. As they filed out of the door, some towards the laboratory lift, most to the mess hall for breakfast, Eli called out. “Marcus, please stay back.”
Marcus paused and turned back to the circle of chairs, where he stood and silently watched Eli’s projection, until everyone left the room. A burgundy porter left last and pulled the door closed behind him.
The man and the Poppy Seed mirage stared at each other for a brief moment, then Eli spoke. “Marcus, I want to give you something.”
“Thank you, Eli, but I am quite happy with the terms of our contract as they stand," Marcus said, his brow furrowed.
“Sure, sure,” Eli deflected. “But I want to give you something. This is not as your employer. This is not a payment for anything. This is a gift, from me to you. Because I like you Marcus. And I think you’ll be pleased.”
Marcus unconsciously raised an eyebrow, but remained silent.
“You’re a healthy man, Marcus. Your ears are incredibly sensitive! Further, you have the single best mind to walk through those doors in the last three years.”
It was not lost on Marcus that Eli himself had not physically entered this room in the last three years. But Marcus was happy to entertain the notion his mind was second only to Eli’s.
“But your eyes, Marcus...”
Marcus winced, knowing that his eyesight was his failing, and the cause of much frustration and pain for him.
“I did some asking around about it. I know you’ve tried almost every surgery available, short of a complete transplant. I know that you suffer headaches and that medication doesn’t help. And I know that without your glasses you are unable to walk around safely.”
Marcus was not surprised that a man with Eli’s pull and standing would have access to his private medical records.
“One of my companies has just finished development and testing of a new technology. It’s going to change the world, Marcus. It’s going to change your life. I want to cure you of your pain, and focus your vision, permanently," Eli said to him with utter seriousness.
Marcus squinted, looking to see if this was some sort of prank. The two men stared each other down for a moment.
“How?” Marcus asked, with unconcealed scepticism.
Eli pointed to a small card-shaped key that was attached to a lanyard and had been left on the chair nearest the door.
The porter must have left it there just now, Marcus thought.
“Take that card, and go to Level A," said Eli, as he smiled and lifted his hand to his invisible keyboard, upon which he struck a few keys.
His image flashed to a bright white, and Marcus could hear the hum of the magnetic field emitters begin to descend in pitch. The Poppy Seeds suddenly fell to the ground with a hiss as they rolled and bounced in all directions, including around Marcus’s feet. What had been Eli Wells a moment ago was now a scattered pile of black dust on the ground around Marcus Hamlin, who stood in silent disbelief at the instruction he had just received. The small robotic vacuum cleaner zoomed into action and began sucking the millions of Poppy Seeds into its receptacle, as Marcus stood, inert.
He was unable to see the room, the robot, or even the chair his eyes were looking towards.
All he could see was the grey key-card, and the radiant glow of a letter A in the foreground of his mind’s eye.
As the elevator door opened, Marcus stepped out onto Level A and found himself in a large enclosed circular vestibule, with walls and ceilings cut of granite rock. A single white light, encased in a brass cage, buzzed above him and reflected off the stainless steel checker plate floor.
He stepped into the centre of the circular room, his business shoes clopping loudly, and echoing in a way that irritated his sensitive ears. He turned and counted the doors around him as the elevator shut. Spanning the full perimeter of the room, there were thirteen solid steel doors, the last of which were the twin split doors leading back into the elevators. Each of the unknown doors had an air vent above it, and a small panel beside it, lit with a red square.
He stepped to the door directly in front of him and tapped the card on the red light. Silence. He repeated the gesture at the next door. More silence.
As he reached the third door in the circle, he heard a dull thumping sound emanating from beyond. He pressed his ear to the cold metal surface to try and hear more. Goosebumps bulged across his neck at the icy temperature, and he closed his eyes to rest his mind from its most taxing task of maintaining focused vision. In the darkness his hearing was intensified.
Mallets striking metal plates.
Welding arcs sparking.
Voices calling to each other.
The buzzing of motorised parts moving, stopping, moving again.
The rhythmic thump of something heavy stepping along a metallic floor.
He knew this was where the A-team was working, and he hoped he was about to unravel their mystery in full as he tapped the lock with the key-card.
Silence.
With a sigh of disappointment, Marcus continued his march around the circle, testing each door with no luck. When he reached the sixth, the last before crossing the entrances to the lifts, he tapped his card and was met with the snap of the red light to a bright and inviting green, with a cheerful beep and an automated open entrance.
The dimly lit granite vestibule was flooded with light, and Marcus stepped through a short hall into a chamber that was also circular in shape, and a bright white from floor to ceiling. Marcus’s poor vision could not determine the exact source of the intense light, but to him it seemed that the chamber’s lining was emitting its own even glow. He stepped forward and as he moved towards the centre of the room, the door slid shut behind him with a sudden thud. He glanced back at it, his stomach turning in knots at the uncertainty of his purpose in this strange place.
As his eyes adjusted to the glare of the room, he suddenly became aware of a tall glass cylinder that stood in the centre, reaching all the way from the floor to the top of the ceiling, unbroken. There was no port or tunnel opening at top or bottom, and Marcus was immediately curious of its purpose. He stepped up to it and placed his hand on the side. In an alarming instant, a section of the glass surface lit up with a projection of coloured words and lights. Before Marcus had time to examine and read the display, a voice filled the chamber, making him jump in shock.
“Doctor Marcus Hamlin. Welcome," came the gentle male voice.
Marcus’s brow creased as he considered the sound of the voice. He knew it. He had heard it only minutes ago.
“Andrew? Is that you?” he asked the omnipresent voice.
“Yes. I am the Hullsworth-Epstein Linguistics Operating System. I have been installed as the Voice-User Interface for this WellsHealth Surgical Pod.”
WellsHealth Surgical Pod?! Marcus thought in consternation. He had known that Eli’s medical tech company had created a number of widely adopted devices for hospitals, but he had never heard of such a pod. In response to the silence from Marcus, the voice of Andrew volunteered some more information.
“Your visit was scheduled for this morning, Marcus. May I call you Marcus?”
“Uh, yes. That’s fine," said Marcus, fumbling over his own words in awkward bewilderment at the experience of speaking to a machine who sounded and seemed human. “What am I doing here?”
“You are here to receive a full medical assessment, as well as reparative optical surgery.”
“Oh,” said Marcus, in a dull state of disbelief. “How?”
As if having said the magic word, the glass cylinder cracked in two and the front half of the cylinder swung outward towards him slightly, suggesting a door. The opening was slightly taller than Marcus, and as the panel swung of its own volition upon invisible hinges, Marcus obeyed the explorer’s calling within him and stepped inside. The panel closed itself around him, and the white light of the room faded to darkness.
“I will begin your examination now, Marcus, please stand still,” said Andrew in his emotionless voice.
A ring of blue light emerged at the top of the glass cylinder and began scanning down the smooth surface, soon reaching the crown of Marcus’s head and sliding the full length of his body to his feet, then disappearing. He had felt only a slight warmth from the light, but before he was able to deduce its meaning, the glass in front of him lit up with a vivid display of shapes and symbols. It seemed that the light was emanating from within the glass itself, and there was no visible evidence of rear or internal projection. Marcus had never seen anything like it. The image was of his body, his organs lit in various colours, with a long list of data appearing and scrolling to the side of the image. Marcus squinted to read the text, but it was small and reversed, and blurred through his glasses. As he reached for his glasses to remove them, Andrew’s voice broke the silence.
“Your body is in good health for the most part, Marcus. There is no sign of abnormal organ deterioration, and for a thirty-four-year-old you are showing the ageing of a thirty-two-year-old. Your vision is 20/160 in your left eye and 20/150 in your right. I am detecting signs of elevated stress and your blood pressure seems a little high for your bodyweight and age. Nutritionally, you appear to be doing well, however I must recommend more sleep and a daily light stroll in the Shangri-La grounds, to help reduce your stress. Will you do this for me, Doctor Hamlin?”
Marcus could not believe the excellent bedside manner of this machine and its Voice-User Interface. The voice was evoking an emotion in him, which he quickly identified as a trusting surrender. “Sure Andrew. Thanks for the tip. I’ll do that. Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“This tube, it looks like glass, but it doesn’t feel like it. What is it made of?”
“It is made of aluminium oxynitride. Transparent aluminium.”
“And the image in the… transparent aluminium… where is that coming from? I don’t see any projectors in the room.”
“The source of the display is an array of microscopic laser emitters housed in two rings at the base and top of the tube. Would you like me to send a message to WellsHealth to request a schematic for you?”
“Uh, no. I doubt they would share that information just for someone asking. Thank you, Andrew.”
“You are welcome. Are you ready to proceed with your eye surgery?” enquired Andrew.
“What... right now?!”
“Yes, Marcus. Now, if you wish.”
“But h-how...? What do I need to do?”
“Nothing. Just stand still please. When you tell me you’re ready, the chamber will be flooded with a general anaesthetic and I will commence the procedure. Your body will be held in an electromagnetic suspension field so it will not fall. The glass in front of you contains micro-laser emitters that will do the rest of the work. They will stimulate your nervous system to ensure your eyes are open wide while you sleep and they will perform the necessary surgery on your lenses. At the end, the chamber will release a dosage of pain-reducing medication in gaseous form, and you will be awakened. Your vision will be fully functional, but I do recommend taking it easy as you make your way back up to your room for a twenty-four hour rest.”
Marcus was astonished at the promise just made. “Okay, I’m ready, Andrew. Let’s do it.”
Marcus heard the hiss of gas being released into the chamber around him, and within seconds he felt his eyelids drooping, and the weight of his body sink into the invisible arms that held him upright.