Alex Q - The Becoming

Nate stepped away from the white board spanning the end wall of the conference room. “I think that’s it, guys. These questions should tell us what we want to know. We have five minutes before we present them to Frank. Anything to add?”

Karen stood and walked over to the board. The eyes of Nate’s colleagues followed her curves with more than passing interest. As Team Leader, he should say a few words concerning unprofessional behavior in the workplace, and was going to, but before reaching the board she turned around. “Did you see enough guys, or shall I parade up and down again? Swing my hips a bit more, maybe?”

The men shuffled their papers. Sam’s face was as red as his bank balance. Nate stifled a smile. This was one country girl who could look after herself.

“Is there any way we can improve communication, by direct speech for example? Could we give it a face?” she asked Nate.

“Shouldn’t be too difficult. Except I’m not sure we’ll be able to impose anything on it at all. It might prefer to choose how it presents itself.”

“What are we going to call it?” Sam asked. “I mean, when we communicate. We can’t refer to it as ‘the entity’ forever.”

“I suggest the same thing applies. I vote we ask it what it wants to be called. It’s not a bad test in itself, if it’s sentient,” Sam said.

A hard and unfamiliar voice rang out from the doorway. “The issue is not your concern anymore.”

They turned to see Frank standing with a well-groomed man in a gray suit. Nate knew the look and the style. The newcomer smelled of government from his shiny patent leathers to the top of his perfectly groomed head.

Frank looked deflated. “Nate, this is Perry Alders, Special Agent NSA.”

“You called in the feds before we’d even started?” Nate asked.

“The NSA doesn’t get called in as you put it, Mr … ?”

“Taylor. Doctor.” Nate was sure Alders knew exactly who he was.

“Excuse me. Doctor,” he acknowledged with a slight mocking bow. “Under the Emergency Powers Act Section 13, Article 58, I am informing you that this organization has been commandeered and your services are no longer required.”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“Not at all, Dr Sommers. Do I look like I’m joking?”

Sam sat back with his arms folded. “Me, I’m going nowhere until someone explains what the hell is going on.”

“You will do exactly as I say or find yourself confined indefinitely under the Emergency Powers Act. It is the only explanation you will get. Is that clear enough for you?”

Ted jumped to his feet, shouting angrily. “Listen, I don’t care who the hell he—”

“You have ten minutes to clear the building. Take personal possessions only; everything else stays here. You are forbidden to discuss your work with anyone. Failure to comply will result in detention under the—”

“Let me guess,” Karen interrupted, “the Emergency Powers Act?” There was a hint of annoyance at the jibe on Alders’ face as he turned to leave.

Frank removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Alders appeared out of the blue, marched right into the office and gave me the paperwork. The company’s been bought out using an NSA compulsory order signed by the Secretary of State. We have to vacate the premises, and there’s a team of government muscle men on hand to persuade any of us who don’t comply.”

Nate pulled on his jacket. “This is crazy. One thing for sure, we can’t discuss it here. When Alders said ten minutes, I think he meant it. Let’s go, folks.”

In a few short minutes Taylor Cybertronix ceased to exist and the name was erased from company registration records. The offices were home to a new branch of the NSA with the acronym QLB, the Quadnet Liaison Bureau. During the following hours two floors of the building were fitted with a new security access system and crammed with the latest quantum computing equipment.

The project had one goal, defined and implemented by Mike Picket, Secretary of State. It was simple and direct; for the purpose of global strategic economic and military dominance, the USA must have complete control of the emerging Quadnet entity.

An hour later Nate unlocked the door to his apartment, stepped inside, and threw his coat onto the couch before pouring himself a stiff one, the first of the day and much too early. The discussion between the former employees of Taylor Cybertronix on the pavement outside the office building was less than satisfying, and the gag order forbade the former employees from communicating any related details to anyone. They were given a document outlining the severance details, which included five years pay, but financial considerations were the last thing on Nate’s mind.

His father had built the company from nothing over twenty years ago, and now it was gone, just like that. The corporation had put Nate through school and was his dad’s life’s work. He felt completely helpless in the face of this unforeseen disaster, helpless and angry.

It was obvious the NSA had monitored this possible first contact and taken over ‘for the good of America’. He could hear how the President would say it on his weekly TV broadcast ‘Breakfast With The President’. The government could do anything they wanted under the draconian Emergency Powers. The Event was potentially the single most important thing to happen since the birth of Jesus Christ, and Nate was to be denied access.

The telephone rang. “Hi. It’s Karen. Can I come over? We should talk. I’ve got so many questions, I don’t know where to start.”

“Sure, why not. You can join me in what I loosely call my evening meal, which is a term far too grandiose for what I prepare.”

“I’ll bring Chinese.”

“I was hoping so. Later.”

Politics was never Carla’s strong point. It’s hard to be passionate about politics when you’re one week’s pay away from the street. OK, one week may be an exaggeration, but my Lord, some times it seems it’s the only thing I think about. The TV newscaster spoke her lines perfectly. Perfect hair, perfect speech, perfect teeth.

“Earlier today a new bill was presented to Congress proposing more sanctions against Kuristan after UN accusations of genocide throughout the Northern region bordering Siberia. Republican Senator Robert Grantham stressed that failure to comply could mean extensive military action. Closer to home …”

No, Carla didn’t follow politics, but she did have her opinions, and one of these was that people and countries should be left alone. You didn’t need to be a genius to see how military action always followed sanctions.

“No thought for God’s creatures in other countries. We’re all brothers and sisters. Such behavior shouldn’t be allowed.” Talking to herself was a growing habit. “People like him shouldn’t be senators if they can’t do what the people want, and the people don’t want another war, I’m sure of that. God knows I don’t mean harm to nobody, but it might be better if some people didn’t exist at all.”

Both Carla and the Senator would wake next morning to very different lives. Carla’s routine would be familiar – making breakfast for her son, walking him to school, and wondering where her next paycheck is coming from. Senator Robert J. Grantham would find his own day a little more challenging. He would have to come to terms with a new life devoid of credit cards, assets, stocks, or online identity.

Nate abandoned the chop-sticks after successfully flicking several pieces of meat into his lap instead of up to his mouth. Taking a fork from the drawer, he watched Karen use hers with considerable expertise. He wondered if she did everything well.

She wiped her mouth and nodded towards the lounge. “I guess you live alone. You should air this place out sometimes.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry ’bout the mess. I try to clean once a week, but you know how it is.” He changed the subject. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was. This is good, whatever it is.”

“It’s chicken, and I’m glad you liked it. What do you make of today’s fiasco? You being team leader, I mean.”

“Was team leader, Karen, firmly in the past tense. I hadn’t expected it, which is an understatement.”

“I guess we should have known, being contracted to a government agency. And the NSA is the biggest of them all. They’re into everything.”

Nate threw his screwed up carton over the sofa and into the waste bin in the kitchen area. “Didn’t touch the rim. One thing’s certain, it’s a done deal. Agent Alders made it clear, and he’s got Big Government behind him.”

“Seriously though, what will you do tomorrow, and the days after?”

A soft beeping sound signaled an imminent Amazon drone delivery. Nate moved over to the window as a parcel dropped into his outside box. He reached in to retrieve it before returning to the table. “We won’t be short of money for a while, they took care of that. There’s no story to tell the media, because we aren’t allowed talk to anyone about it, pain of prison. Sticks in the throat, I know, but it might be best to accept it and move on.”

“I hear what you’re saying, but don’t you have questions? I sure as hell do.”

“Of course I do,” he snapped, and then regretting his tone. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m a little sensitive right at the moment. You worked as hard as any of us. Researching new avenues, new ways of looking at our world and how it works. We were so close to exciting possibilities. I could feel it, and it’s been taken from us. I’m frustrated and angry, but for the moment I don’t know what to do about it. We were making real inroads into alternative uses for Quadnet.”

“No, I’m the one who should apologize. Didn’t mean to speak out of place. Let me fix you another drink,” she said softly, resting her hand on his arm a second before moving away.

“Question is,” Nate muttered under his breath, “will Quadnet find alternative uses for us?”

“What did you say?”

Nate cradled his second drink. Much too early, but what the hell; he had no work to go back to. Maybe he’d sleep the rest of the day. “Imagine yourself as an awakening consciousness, imagine yourself as Quadnet come to life. One second nothing, the next instant, boom, you take a big breath and you’re aware of, well, everything there is. You’re super intelligent and you knew everything there ever was to know; what would you do?”

“Assuming computational power and inter-connectivity loosely relates to human-type thought, I guess I would need time to take stock. Like any new-born, it would be bombarded with information and would attempt to make sense of its place. I think I might lay low for a while. At least until I’d made some sense out of what was happening around me.”

Nate nodded. “You could be right. But we think this way because we’re human. Why would an aware Quadnet have similar thought processes? Would it have what we call a thought process at all? We’re trying to describe a non-human entity in human terms.”

“True enough. It’s possible it wouldn’t consciously think or apply any kind of serial logic.”

“Ideas simply occur to it, you mean, a kind of enhanced intuition?”

“Nate, I don’t know what I mean. One thing for sure, we’re out of it. It’s the government’s problem now. It may be that Quadnet will be content to ponder its awareness and carry on as usual. ”

“Would you, if your mental capacity was so far advanced the rest of us seemed like insects? Worse. Fungus, even.”

“Fungus is going a bit far,” she said.

The phone rang. “Hi, Nate Taylor.”

“It’s Sam. I was just sending you an email. I suppose we can still send mail now the feds are in control. We’ll soon find out if it gets deleted when I send it. Anyway, I was writing to you, Ted and Karen ̶ ”

“Karen’s with me now.”

“Yeah? Some guys have all the luck. Listen Nate, fire up your favorite device and type the word can’t.”

“Excuse me, Sam, but we lost our jobs, our project and our team in one day. I’m not exactly in gaming mode.”

“Dude, do it. You can apologize later.” The phone went dead. Nate looked at it blankly.

“What was that about?” Karen asked.

He sat and opened his Q-Pad. “That was Sam. You know how he likes his games. OK, let’s see. He wants me to type the word can’t.”

“Type it where? In a browser, in a document, on FacePrint, locally, online? It’s not what you might call specific, which I have to say is typical Sam.”

“Let’s try online.” Nate opened Quantilla, the browser used by two thirds of the Earth’s six billion users and typed can’t into the search bar. They both stared at the word cannot clearly displayed. He typed it again. The same thing happened.

“Let me have a go.” Karen tried unsuccessfully to get the word to display on social media platforms, in emails and in docs stored on the computers cube drive. “This is plain freaky. How is it possible?”

“Let’s see what happens if we go offline.”

“Modern devices are always online. They can’t be anything but online; it’s how they function. Is offline even possible?”

“What we need is an old machine without Qi-Fi integration.” Nate walked into the hallway, opening and closing cupboard doors before he found what he was looking. Blowing off the dust, he opened the lid of a Pentium cored laptop and pressed the start button.

“I’ve only seen pictures of these,” Karen said. “What can it do?”

“Not a lot compared to what we’re used to, but what it does have is a little button that disconnects it from the internet. It doesn’t have any parts based on quantum electronics, so it can function off-line.”

“Can it connect through Qi-Fi? I don’t see how it can work.”

Nate put the machine on the counter top separating the kitchen and the living room and waited for the old machine to boot up, a process that could easily take more than two minutes. “Old WiFi technology is ridiculously low level compared to the quantum protocol used in QiFi, but the functionality was kept during the period when quantum computers were replacing other devices around the world. As far as I know, it wasn’t removed.”

Karen watched the screen curiously.

“Here we go,” Nate said. “First, I’ll activate the browser and type can’t.” The word cannot once again appeared in its place.

“Now without the Internet.” Nate pressed the Wi-Fi on-off switch and cannot turned into can’t, as it had been typed.

“That’s a relief,” said Karen. “At least we know we’re not delusional. Open a document. I assume the whirring sound is a disk drive of sorts?”

“Yes, most computers had moving drives in those days. Here’s a text file. Let’s see what it contains.” The file opened to display a news report. Nate searched for can’t.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to see what happens if the word is contained in an existing document stored locally.” Nate activated Wi-Fi again, and they watched as each occurrence of can’t in the text was replaced with cannot. “Jeez, can you imagine the scope and power of an algorithm designed to do this? To cover Quadnet it would take hundreds of programmers, even at quantum speeds.”

“Or an aware internet.”

“But what would be the purpose of changing the way a word is spelled? Doesn’t make sense.”

“No sense to us, you mean, as human beings. Humans have purpose. Why should an artificial mind have the same attribute? It could be an automatic response and not know it’s doing it. It could be a secondary function of something else.”

“We need to get back in there, Karen. This event might be the best or the worst thing to ever happen in human history. What if—”

“What if covers a thousand scenarios. I’m not quite ready to delve into sci fi territory yet: we created a monster and such. Anyway, how’s your dad coping?”

Nate closed the laptop, and Karen put her coat on, ready to leave. “He’s quiet. Like when he came to the conference room with Alders. I remember when I’ve seen him like that before, and it’s not good. The company was his life, and I’m worried about how it’s going to affect his health.”

Karen stretched up to kiss him on the cheek as he reached for her bag laying on the sofa. Her lips accidentally brushed his. Her breath was hot and sweet. “Sorry about that.”

“I’m not sure I am. Can’t resist me, eh? ” Nate said, breaking the spell that hovered in the air for a split second. He swore at himself for the stupid joke and the smirk he knew was splashed across his face.

Karen instantly recovered and continued with the charade. “You wish. Dream on, Dr Taylor.” Her smile held in place until she was on the other side of the apartment door. She hesitated a few seconds before walking away.

Nate slept a fitful sleep that night, and dreamed the same recurring dream. He searched the rooms of a mansion, the daylight streaming through the windows gradually fading as night fell. He flipped on a nearby light switch, but nothing happened. He moved faster along the corridor, trying switch after switch to no avail, and soon finding himself in total darkness, his childhood phobia.

He became aware of a presence so malevolent he was paralyzed with fear. Out of the darkness a hand gripped his forearm with inhuman strength, and Nate screamed. Sitting bolt upright in his bed, he breathed heavily and looked around with relief. The feeling didn’t last; the bedroom felt wrong somehow. Everything was in the right place, except it didn’t seem real.

The light faded rapidly once again as he lunged for the bedside lamp, frantically yanking at the cord until it broke off in his hand. A profound darkness pressed him on all sides, and he opened his mouth wide to scream loud and long. Hearing the birds singing outside the window, and seeing the light of approaching dawn, he knew it was over. It was a dream within a dream. Throwing on his dressing gown, he went to the kitchen, turned on the TV and listened to the news while making coffee.

“Senator Robert Grantham stressed that the anomalies will not affect his capacity to carry out his duties representing the people of Alabama,” the presenter said. “The Senator had this to say earlier today.”

The camera cut to Senator Grantham standing outside his town residence.

“I am as mystified as anyone. It seems that any reference to me, my work, and my name has been removed from every document and web page on the internet. The records of stocks and shares I own have been erased, and my bank accounts have been closed without evidence of who did it or why. My credit cards are no longer valid, and my security access cards are denied. I am cooperating with the agents assigned to the investigation and will do my utmost to bring the perpetrators to justice.”

“Senator, do you believe there could be a connection with the recent Kuristan Sanctions Bill you recently tabled before Congress?”

“I have no idea. The matter is in the hands of the FBI, who will report to me through the Secretary of State. We will keep the media informed through the usual channels. Finally, let me say if this hack, or whatever it is, can be traced back to an enemy foreign power, I consider it to be a serious matter. Cyber attacks of this nature were of course banned internationally as outlined in the 2026 Paris Treaty.”

“Senator, Senator, one more question ...” The hopeful reporter received no reply.

The cameras followed the back of Senator Grantham as a group of journalists holding a variety of recording devices called after him in vain.

Nate shook his head. Anything difficult to explain online was instantly blamed on a foreign power, notably the Sino-Russian Federation of States. There always needed to be a bogey man.

He dressed in yesterday’s clothes, dropped a few flakes of food into a bowl of fish on the hallway table and left the apartment to grab a bagel at Joe’s Coffee n’ Cake on the corner of 5th and Main. The morning was crisp and bright, exactly how he liked it, and Joe’s was empty, thanks to the early hour.

Taking a table by the window, a black Ford parked at the other side of the street caught his eye. It was out of place in this neighborhood. Too shiny, too new, with windows too tinted. Government was written all over it. Nate sighed and took a bite of his bagel.

Inevitable, really. Being watched in what was basically a quasi police surveillance was increasingly inevitable for any citizen. Stands to reason they’ll be watching me. I’m the only man in the world who may have had contact with an aware Quadnet.

Even so, being watched physically was unusual. It just wasn’t necessary anymore. The use of the two dollar credits for the bagel and coffee would locate him at Joe’s. When physical money became redundant, Big Brother’s noose was complete. There was nowhere to hide. So why the physical presence?

Nate finished his meal, went to the rest room and slipped out of Joe’s back door. He wasn’t sure why, except he wanted to feel like he had control of something, anything. He walked to the end of the alley, looked quickly behind him and turned onto 5th Street into a wall of muscle.