Factoring Humanity, Page 9

  “Oh, yeah.” Heather held her fist in front of her face, as if gripping a communicator, and shouted in her best imitation of William Shatner, “Khannnnn!” She pointed. “It’s in the bookcase over there.”

  Kyle sprinted across the room and found the DVC he was looking for. “Do you mind?” he said, indicating the TV hanging on the wall. Heather shook her head, and he slipped the chip into the player, then sat down on the couch opposite the screen. He found the remote and jammed his finger against the fast-forward button.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Heather.

  “This guy I know in Anthropology said there’s a mistake in the film: a shot where some thrusters should be firing but they don’t actually light up.”

  Heather smiled indulgently. “Let me get this straight. You bought that bit about the Genesis Wave that can turn a lifeless hunk of rock into a fully formed ecosystem in a matter of hours, but you’re bothered by whether the thrusters light up?”

  “Shh,” said Kyle. “We’re almost there.”

  The bridge doors hiss open. Chekov walks in, with a bandage on his ear. The crew looks at him precisely the way you should look at someone who recently had an alien parasite crawl out of his head. He takes the weapons station. The pan following Chekov reveals Uhura, Sulu, Saavik, Kirk, and Spock—all wearing those red serge uniforms that make them look like Mounties. Kirk leaves his central chair and moves over to Spock’s station. They’re being pursued through the Mutara nebula by Khan Noonien Singh, who has hijacked a Federation starship.

  “He won’t break off now,” says Kirk, looking at the main viewscreen, filled with static caused by the nebula. “He followed me this far. He’ll be back. But from where?”

  Spock looks up from his scanner. “He’s intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking.” He raises his upswept eyebrows as he says “two dimensional,” and he and Kirk exchange a meaningful glance, then a tight little grin appears on Kirk’s face. He moves back to his command chair and points at Sulu. “Full stop.”

  Sulu touches controls. “Full stop, sir.”

  Kirk to Sulu: “Zee minus ten thousand meters.” And to Chekov: “Stand by photon torpedoes.”

  And there it was: a shot from directly above, looking down on the Enterprise. Kyle had always admired the way the ships in the classic Star Trek movies were self-illuminating—a spotlight from the central, raised part of the saucer was lighting up the registration number NCC-1701. Directly beneath the ship was a swirling purple-and-pink maelstrom, part of the Mutara nebula.

  For a second, Kyle thought Stone had been wrong—there were lights flashing on the edge of the saucer. But they were precisely positioned at the bow and directly to port: running lights. The starboard one wasn’t working, which Kyle thought was admirable attention to detail, since that side of the ship had been damaged earlier in battle.

  But—damn, Stone was right. The four clusters of ACS thrusters were clearly visible on the upper surface of the saucer section, each one offset forty-five degrees from the center line. And they weren’t firing at all.

  If his original set of Pocket Books’ Star Trek: The Motion Picture blueprints wasn’t worth twelve hundred bucks on the collector’s market, why, he’d demand his money back.

  Heather was leaning against the wall, watching Kyle as he watched the movie. She was amused by it all. Her husband, she knew, thought that William Shatner was a marvelous actor—there was something endearing about Kyle’s utter lack of taste. Then again, she thought, he also thinks I’m beautiful. One shouldn’t be too quick to elevate another’s standards.

  She’d been drinking white wine while Kyle watched the movie through to the end.

  “I always liked Khan,” said Heather with a smile, moving now to sit on the couch. “A guy who goes absolutely nuts when his wife dies—just the way it should be.”

  Kyle smiled back at her.

  He’d lived on his own for a year now, but it was never supposed to be permanent. Just for a few weeks; give them each some space, some time, some privacy.

  And then suddenly, Becky, too, had moved out.

  And Heather was alone.

  And, somehow, there seemed to be less drawing Kyle back—less a sense that the family had to be restored.

  The family—it had never even had a name. It wasn’t the Graveses; it wasn’t the Davises. It had just been.

  Heather looked now at Kyle, the wine having warmed her. She did love him. It had never been like that romp with Josh Huneker. With Kyle, it had always been deeper, more important, more satisfying on a dozen different levels. Even if he was, in so many ways, still just a little boy—his fondness for Star Trek and a million other things simultaneously amusing her and melting her heart.

  She reached out, put her hand on top of his.

  And he responded, placing his other hand on top of hers.

  He smiled.

  She smiled.

  And they leaned together in a kiss.

  There had been perfunctory kisses over the past year, but this one lingered. Their tongues touched.

  The lights had dimmed automatically when the wall TV had been turned on. Kyle and Heather moved even closer together.

  It was like old times. They kissed some more, then he nibbled on her earlobe and ran his tongue around the curves of her ear.

  And then his hand found her breast, rolling her nipple through the fabric of her shirt between thumb and forefinger.

  She felt warm—the wine, the pent-up desire, the summer’s night.

  His hand wandered down, flittering across her belly, sliding along her thigh toward her crotch.

  Just like it had so many times before.

  Suddenly she tensed, the muscles in her thighs bunching.

  Kyle lifted his hand. “What’s wrong?”

  She looked into his eyes.

  If only she could know. If only she could know for sure.

  She dropped her gaze.

  Kyle sighed. “I guess I should be going,” he said.

  Heather closed her eyes and didn’t stop him from leaving.

  12

  It was one of those moments of hazy semiconsciousness. Heather was dreaming—and knew that she was dreaming. And, like a good Jungian, she was trying to interpret the dream as it went along.

  There was a cross in the dream. That in itself was unusual; Heather wasn’t given to religious symbolism.

  But it wasn’t a wooden cross; rather, it was made of crystal. And it wasn’t a practical rendition—you couldn’t actually crucify a man on it. The arms were much, much thicker than they needed to be, and were rather stubby.

  As she watched, the crystal cross began to rotate around its long axis. But as soon as it did so, it became apparent that it wasn’t really a cross. In addition to the protrusion at either side, there were identical protrusions front and back.

  Her perspective was moving closer. She could see seams now; the object was made up of eight transparent cubes: a stack of them four high, and then four more arranged around the faces of the third cube from the top. It spun faster and faster, light glinting off its glassy surface.

  An unfolded hypercube.

  And, as she came even closer, she heard a voice.

  Deep, masculine, resonant.

  A strong voice.

  The voice of God?

  No, no—a superior being, but not God.

  Her pattern suggests three-dimensional thinking.

  Heather woke up, covered with sweat.

  Spock, of course, had said his pattern in the film, referring to Khan. The “her”—well it had to be Heather, didn’t it?

  Khan had been missing something—missing the obvious. Missing the fact that spaceships could go up and down as well as left and right or forward and backward. Heather had been missing something obvious, too, apparently—and her subconscious was trying to tell her that.

  But as she lay there in bed, alone, she couldn’t figure out what.

  “Good morning,
Cheetah.”

  “Good morning, Dr. Graves. You didn’t put me in suspend mode when you left yesterday; I took advantage of the time to do some online research, and I have some questions for you.”

  Kyle headed over to the coffeemaker and set it about its business, then sat down in front of Cheetah’s console. “Oh?”

  “I’ve been going through old news stories. I find that most electronic versions of newspapers only go back to some date in the nineteen-eighties or nineties.”

  “Why should you care about decades-old news? It ain’t news if it’s old.”

  “That was intended as a humorous comment, wasn’t it, Dr. Graves?”

  Kyle grunted. “Yes.”

  “I could tell by your use of the word ‘ain’t.’ You only use it when you’re trying to be funny.”

  “Trust me, Cheetah, if you were human, you’d be rolling in the aisle.”

  “And when you speak in a high tone like that, I know you’re still being funny.”

  “Full marks. But you still haven’t told me why you’re reading old news stories.”

  “You consider me to be non-human because, among other things, I can’t make ethical judgments that correspond to those a human would make. I have been looking for news stories that relate to ethical issues and am trying to fathom what a real human would do under such circumstances.”

  “Okay,” said Kyle. “What story did you dig up that’s got you perplexed?”

  “This: in nineteen eighty-five, a nineteen-year-old woman named Kathy was in her first year at Cornell University. On December twenty of that year, she was driving her boyfriend to his job at a grocery store in Ithaca, New York. The car hit a patch of ice, skidded ten meters, and slammed into a tree. The young man broke some bones, but a tire lying on the rear passenger seat pitched forward and hit Kathy’s head. She fell into a chronic vegetative state—essentially a coma—and was placed in the Westfall Healthcare Center in Brighton, New York. A decade later, in January, nineteen ninety-six, with her still in the coma, it was discovered that Kathy was pregnant.”

  “How could she possibly be pregnant?” said Kyle.

  “And that is the tone you use when speaking to me of matters of sexuality. You think that because I am a simulation that I could have no sophistication in such areas. But it’s you who are being naïve, Dr. Graves. The young woman was pregnant—indeed, had been pregnant for five months at the time it was discovered—because she had been raped.”

  Kyle slumped slightly in his chair. “Oh.”

  “The police launched a search for the rapist,” said Cheetah. “They came up with a list of seventy-five men who had had access to Kathy’s room, but the search quickly narrowed to a fifty-two-year-old certified nurse’s aide named John L. Horace. Horace had been fired three months previously for fondling a forty-nine-year-old multiple-sclerosis patient at Westfall. He refused to provide a DNA sample in the rape case, but police got some from an envelope flap and a stamp he had licked, and they determined that the odds were more than a hundred million to one in favor of Horace being the father.”

  “I’m glad they caught him.”

  “Indeed. In passing, though, I do wonder why this rapist gets automatic membership in the human race, but I have to prove myself?”

  Kyle shuffled over to the coffeemaker, poured himself a cup. “That’s a very good question,” he said at last.

  Cheetah was quiet for a time, then: “There’s more to this story.”

  Kyle took a sip of coffee. “Yes?”

  “There was the matter of the incidental zygotic commencement.”

  “Ah, the coveted IZC. Oh, wait—you mean the baby. Christ, yes. What happened?”

  “Prior to her accident, Kathy had been a devout Roman Catholic. She was, therefore, opposed to abortion. Taking that into account, Kathy’s parents decided that Kathy should have the baby and that they would raise the child.”

  Kyle was incredulous. “Have the baby while still in a coma?”

  “Yes. It is possible. Comatose women had given birth before, but this was the first known case of a woman becoming pregnant after going into a coma.”

  “They should have aborted the pregnancy,” said Kyle.

  “You humans make judgments so quickly,” said Cheetah, with what sounded like envy. “I have tried and tried to resolve this issue and I find I cannot.”

  “What way are you leaning?”

  “I tend to think that if they let the baby live, it should have been placed in a foster home.”

  Kyle blinked. “Why?”

  “Because Kathy’s mother and father, by forcing her to give birth in such extreme conditions, demonstrated that they were ill-suited to be parents.”

  “Interesting take. Were there any polls conducted at the time about what should be done?”

  “Yes—The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle ran one. But the option I proposed wasn’t even put forward—meaning, I guess, that it’s not something a normal human would come up with.”

  “No, it’s not. Your position has a certain logic to it, but it doesn’t seem right emotionally.”

  “You said you would abort the child,” said Cheetah. “Why?”

  “Well, I’m pro-choice, but even most of those who are pro-life make exceptions for cases of incest or rape. And what about the kid, for Pete’s sake? What effect would that kind of origin have on it?”

  “That had not occurred to me,” said Cheetah. “The child—a boy—was born on March eighteen, nineteen ninety-six, and if he’s still alive, would be twenty-one now. Of course, his identity has been protected.”

  Kyle said nothing.

  “Kathy,” continued Cheetah, “died at the age of thirty, one day before the child’s first birthday; she never came out of the coma.” The computer paused. “It does make me wonder. The ethical dilemma—whether or not to countenance an abortion—could not have been drawn in sharper terms, even though I don’t seem to be able to resolve it properly.”

  Kyle nodded. “We’re all tested in various ways,” he said.

  “I know that better than most,” said Cheetah, in a tone that was a credible imitation of being rueful. “But when I am tested, it is by you. When human beings are tested, though—and a case such as this clearly seems to be a test—who is it that is administering the test?”

  Kyle opened his mouth to reply, closed it, then opened it again. “That’s another very good question, Cheetah.”

  Heather sat in her office, thinking.

  She’d stared at the messages from space day in and day out for years, trying to fathom their meaning.

  They had to be rectangular images. She’d tried to identify any cultural bias related to prime numbers, any reason why she’d interpret them one way while someone from China or Chad or Chile would interpret them some other way. But there wasn’t anything—the only cultural issue she could come up with was an argument about whether the number 1 qualified as a prime number.

  No, if the length of the signals were the products of two prime numbers, then the only logical conclusion was that they were meant to be arranged into rectangular grids.

  Her computer had all 2,843 messages stored on it.

  But there were some messages that had been decoded, right at the beginning. Eleven of them, to be exact—a prime number. Meaning there were 2,832 undecoded messages.

  Now that number was not a prime—it was an even number, and except for 2 there were, by definition, no even prime numbers.

  A quantum computer could tell her in a twinkling what the factors of 2,832 were. Obviously, half that value would be a factor—1,416would go into it twice. And half of that, 708. And half of that, 354. And half of that, 177. But 177 was an odd number, meaning that its half wouldn’t be a whole number.

  She’d sometimes thought that maybe each day’s message made up only a portion of a larger whole, but she’d never found a meaningful way to order the pages. Of course, until a few days ago, they’d never known how many pages there were in total.

&n
bsp; But now they did know. Maybe they did fit together into bigger groups, the way the backsides of trading cards often tile together to form a picture.

  She brought up her spreadsheet program on her desktop computer and made a little sheet that simply divided 2,832 by consecutive integers, starting with 1.

  There were only twenty numbers that divided into 2,832 evenly. She deleted the ones that didn’t divide evenly, leaving her with this table:

  This Divides into 2,832

  Integer This Many Times

  1 2832

  2 1416

  3 944

  4 708

  6 472

  8 354

  12 236

  16 177

  24 118

  48 59

  59 48

  118 24

  177 16

  236 12

  354 8

  472 6

  708 4

  944 3

  1416 2

  2832 1

  Of course, the assumption by most researchers was that there were 2,832 individual pages of data—but there might be as few as one page, made up of 2,832 tiles. Or there could be two pages, each made up of 1,416 tiles. Or three, made up of 944 tiles. And so on.

  But how to tell which combination the Centaurs had intended?

  She stared at the list, noting its symmetry: the first line was 1 and 2,832; the last was the reverse—2,832 and 1. And so the lines were paired up and down until the middle two: 48 and 59; 59 and 48.

  It was almost as if the middle two were the pivot, the axle on which the great propeller of figures rotated.

  And—

  Christ—

  Except for 1, 3, and 177, the number 59 was the only possibly prime number on the list: all the others were even numbers and, by definition, couldn’t be primes.

  And—wait. Kyle had taught her a trick years ago. If the digits composing a number added up to a number divisible by three, then the original number was also divisible by three. Well, the digits making up 177—one, seven, and seven—added up to fifteen, and three went into fifteen five times, meaning 177 couldn’t be prime.

  But what about the number 59? Heather had no idea how to determine if a number was prime, except by brute force. She made another quickie spreadsheet, this one dividing 59 by every whole number smaller than itself.