MIND FIELDS Page 4

“Man!” Sam gasped. “I can’t believe it. What happened in there? Why didn’t they go for it? It seems like a no-brainer. How could they not green light us on this one?”

  Sandi slumped back against the wall and ran her hands through her hair, pulling it back behind her neck. “Relax, Doc,” she said, “I was great.” All of the tension had melted from her face.

  Sam was beet red. “Jeez, Sandi! How could you do that to me?”

  She giggled. “Let’s get some coffee and celebrate.”

  __

  Baltimore, Maryland. April 24, 2050

  Poe Towers stretched high above the Baltimore skyline overlooking the city’s famous downtown harbor area. It was the most prestigious residence in the downtown area with a spectacular view of Harbor Place, Oriole Park at Camden Yards and Baltimore Ravens Stadium. It was exactly the kind of place Paul Hingston had dreamed of when JT Anderson approached him on that day nearly five years ago, and his lucrative contract at BNI made it all possible,

  On a beautiful Sunday morning like this, Paul loved to get up late, put up a pot of coffee and read the paper out on the terrace of his penthouse apartment suite. Every other day of the week he would catch the morning news on the Internet monitor at his kitchen table, but on Sunday he liked to be old fashioned. He loved to rustle the newspaper and peruse the week’s top stories with an occasional glance over at his mug to dip a donut in the steaming coffee. The sports section was always first; he prided himself in knowing the stats of all the O’s players, and he looked forward to the start of the baseball season each spring. After a slow march through his favorite comics, he would eventually meander over to the front section. Today was one of those days.

  Paul neatly folded the sports and comics and walked in to pour a second cup of coffee. He then returned to the porch and took a deep breath of the fresh springtime air as he admired the view. He could hardly believe that he was really living this life. It was times like this that he could forget, ever so briefly, just how lonely he really had been since he let Sandi slip out of his life; no one else before her, or since, had ever felt so right. He nestled into a lounge chair, placed his mug on a small chair-side table and began to read the news. He wearily flipped through as he glanced at the happenings of the world around him; if it wasn’t in the US, he was not particularly interested. He took a long, slow sip, and turned to page eighteen. At the top of the page was the title For Your Health. He skimmed the latest human-interest stories. One was about how a child from a poor South American country was flown up to the University of Maryland Hospital to repair a horrible birth defect. There was the usual pre-summer article about the importance of wearing sunscreen as the season approached when everyone would be spending more of their leisure time outside under the ozone-starved, sun-drenched atmosphere. His eyes scanned down to the next blurb: ‘Congress Authorizes Human Trial of Artificial Brain Cells.’

  Paul’s gaze froze on the headline for a moment, and then he began to read the article describing the new neuronanobots developed by Dr. Sandra Fletcher at Johns Hopkins.

  “Shit!” He crumpled the paper and slammed it down on the coffee table. He jumped up, looking at the paper unfolding itself and falling to the floor. “Shit!” he yelled again, a bit louder this time. He was so angry that he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He paced quickly back and forth along the length of the terrace, and then stormed inside.

  “Computer,” he sniped toward the monitor on his kitchen table, “phone Dr. Sandra Fletcher, home address.”

  “Dialing,” the synthesized voice of the computer responded dutifully.

  After a brief pause, the phone rang three times before Sandi picked up. “Hello?”

  “How in the hell did you pull it off, Sandi?” Sandi had just come back from her morning jog, and rushed in to answer the phone that she heard ringing from the doorway. “Paul? Is that you, Paul?” she asked, wiping the moisture from her forehead with the hand towel that was slung around her shoulders. She hadn’t heard from Paul in nearly two years. “You saw the article, huh? Just call to congratulate me?”

  “Congratulate you?” he said angrily. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing? Who did the dirty work for you, Sandi, huh? Who swiped the data from my lab?”

  Sandi couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Is that what you’re calling for, to accuse me of stealing your work? You’ve got a hell of a nerve, Paul Hingston. What audacity. So you think you are the only one capable of programming bots? I didn’t even know you were working on neuronanobots.”

  “Didn’t know I …bullshit! Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “I guess so. I can’t believe that you really think I would do such a thing. This was my work Paul. It was mine and I’m damned proud of it. If you were too slow to get there first, that’s your problem. Heck, if you really were working on the same thing and I beat you to the punch, then I’m even more proud of it.”

  “How did you do it, Sandi? Who’s the mole in my lab?”

  “I think you’ve said enough, Paul.” Sandi hung up the phone.

  “Sandi? Sandi! Don’t you hang up on me, God damn it.”

  “Dr. Fletcher is no longer on the line,” the computer informed him.

  “No shit, Sherlock. Disconnect.”

  “Phone line disconnected.”

  Paul stormed into his bedroom to get dressed. He felt terrible. It had been two years since he had seen Sandi, and he missed her fiercely. He had often searched for a way to try to get her back. This was not the conversation he had dreamed of. He took off his robe and threw it angrily in the direction of the hamper. “Paul, you idiot.” He wasn’t sure which he was angrier about, the fact that Sandi had beaten him to the finish line by stealing his work, or the fact that he had just vastly increased the distance between them.

  After stewing about his bad fortune for a while, Paul decided that he needed to get out of the apartment. Why waste such a beautiful day? he tried to convince himself. The Orioles were set to open their first season series against the Yankees at Camden Yards this afternoon; it seemed the perfect diversion. The day passed slowly. He fought his way through the sellout crowd at the ballpark to get to his seat. He tried to get a hold of his friend Sean so he’d have some company, but hadn’t had any luck. He didn’t mind too much. He often went to the park by himself; he found the diversion of the game to be a great escape from his problems, work or personal. The game lived up to its promise, a five to four victory by the home team, capped by a two-out grand slam by Newt Boylston in the bottom of the ninth to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

  It worked for a little while. Paul got caught up in the excitement of the game, sharing the joy of victory with the game-day friends around him in the lower box seats behind home plate. But the magic gradually faded as he walked away from the ballpark; by the time he got home it was entirely gone. He picked up the paper and read the article about the Hopkins nanobot program again. He still couldn’t believe it. Over the past year, he had spent nearly every waking hour developing a programming protocol for neuronanobots. He knew Sandi had been working with neuronanobots; in fact, the work she had published on the Phase One bots created the breakthrough that he needed to make his Phase Two bots useful. Until she came up with a way to get the bots to converge at the damaged area of the brain, he had not been sure how he would get his nanobots, designed to transform themselves into new brain cells, to the area of damage in the brain. He had even sent her an e-mail congratulating her when she published the research, but he had no idea that she was working on the same project he was, the development of nanobots that could be transformed into brain cells. She had to have stolen his work in some way; the odds of her coming up with the same idea at the same time were miniscule. Had she really changed that much? He couldn’t believe she would deny the fact that it was his work, much less that she would steal it from him in the first place. It had t
o be someone else in the lab, someone who was doing it without her knowledge. Paul was determined to figure out who that someone was, and he had a pretty good idea.

  “Dr. Sam Collier,” he muttered to himself, as he looked at the article again. He knew that Sandi had some new hotshot neurologist working on the project with her. The article mentioned that Dr. Collier had been instrumental in developing the new clinical protocol to be used in the human trial for the neuronanobots. “Got to be that little weasel.”

  Paul tossed and turned that night. After about an hour, he decided there was really no point in trying to sleep. He dressed and headed for his lab at BNI. Even for Paul, coming into the office Monday morning at two AM was a bit unusual. The traffic coming out of Baltimore was light, as expected. Paul made good time and pulled into the parking lot. He pressed his thumb against the elevator button, which confirmed his thumbprint and opened the door. As the elevator opened on the twelfth floor, Paul was surprised to see the light on in his office. He heard the sound of a keyboard typing away. It took him a moment to realize what the sound was. It was rare to use a keyboard these days; voice access was always used while working on a computer unless there was a need to be discreet. He was curious to see who was in his office and what it was they were trying to hide.

  He walked cautiously over to the door, stepping softly to mute the sound of his footsteps, and peered around the doorframe into the room. Over the top of the chair, he saw a mop of strawberry colored hair. “Sean!” he yelped, somewhat relieved to see a familiar figure. Even from this angle, that hair was unmistakable.

  Sean jumped as he spun the chair, and smacked his hand against the edge of the desk. “Argh!” He looked up at Paul, and then down at his throbbing hand. “Shit,” he said, shaking his hand to take the sting out. “What are you doing here, man?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “My computer went on the fritz,” Sean said as he spun back and closed the program he was working on. “Never thought you’d be needing yours at this time of the night.” He pulled an optical disk out of the drive. “There, that should do it. All yours now, boss.” Sean got up and brushed quickly past Paul on his way out the door.

  “Thanks,” Paul muttered as he watched his associate move quickly in the darkness toward the exit.

  “Hey, Sean,” he called after him. In the distraction of the moment, he’d forgotten ever so briefly about what had brought him to the office at this late hour. He wanted to talk to Sean about the article, about Sandi, but it was too late. Sean was in the elevator and on the way out. He shook his head. “What in the hell was that all about?” he said to himself, now alone in his office in the middle of the night. He had never known Sean to work nights, and Paul had spent plenty of nights in this lab. It was also very unlike Sean to be so abrupt. He and Paul always seemed to have a special connection, like two men who had been friends much longer than these two had actually known each other. Something just didn’t feel right about this.

  “Oh well.” He shrugged and plopped down on the sofa in his office. “This day’s just getting a little too weird. Now I’m even talking to myself,” he smirked. He wasn’t sure exactly why he had come to the office tonight, he just knew that he couldn’t relax at home, but now fatigue was overtaking him. He decided to grab some sleep, and talk to JT first thing in the morning.

  JT Anderson arrived at his usual time, seven AM. It wasn’t so much that he was a workaholic; at least he didn’t think so. It was just that there was no place that he enjoyed being at more than BNI. He dropped his briefcase on his desk, and took the elevator down to the nanotech floor.

  “How’s it going, Sean?” he said as he entered the lab. “Sean?” he called, as he looked around the room.

  Paul was awakened by JT’s voice. He rolled off the couch and ambled over to the door. JT was about ten feet away, facing the other direction.

  “Mornin’, JT,” he muttered as he stood in the doorway scratching his head.

  JT spun around, eyes wide open. “Paul! I … uh… didn’t think you got in so early on Mondays.” He saw the disheveled clothes. “You sleep here last night?”

  “Yeah … couldn’t sleep too well after I saw the Sunday paper. I figured I might as well come in and catch up on some things, since I couldn’t get work out of my head anyhow.”

  “Have you seen Sean?”

  “Yeah. He was here last night. Acting really strange, too. Almost like I was interrupting something when I came in.”

  JT chuckled. “Must be your imagination.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Why did you expect to see him here so early, anyway? You know Sean, he’s usually home Monday mornings recovering from the weekend.”

  “I thought I saw his car in the lot when I drove up. I figured he must be in here, you know?”

  “Well,” Paul motioned around the room, “doesn’t appear to be.”

  “Nope,” JT agreed. “Sure doesn’t.” He turned and opened the door, then glanced back over his shoulder. “You might want to get washed up, Paul. You look like hell.”

  Paul nodded. He felt like hell, too.

  JT shook his head and laughed. “You work too hard, man.”

  JT headed toward the elevator and Paul followed briefly, catching the office door just before it closed.

  “So,” he called out.

  JT stopped and turned to Paul. “Yeah?”

  “Any idea what he was doing here last night?”

  “Sean? Nope. Guess you’ll just have to ask him when he gets in.”

  “I thought you said his car was already in the lot?”

  JT shrugged. “I must have been mistaken. See you later, Paul.”

  “Right.”

  Paul just stood there, leaning against the door jamb. This just ain’t gonna be a normal week.

  __

  JT had been out fishing on Sunday, and hadn’t caught up on the news. In all of the distraction, he hadn’t really grasped the meaning of Paul’s conversation that morning until he was safely behind his desk.

  “Marlene,” he said. He hated using the generic “computer on” command, and so had reprogrammed his computer to respond to “Marlene” instead. He liked to joke that Marlene was the only woman who would ever listen to him.

  “Yes, JT,” she responded.

  “Get Sean Lightbourne on the horn for me, would you?”

  “Right away, sir.”

  “And pull up a list of headlines from yesterday’s Sunpapers.”

  “Accessing … displaying list now.” A listing of the headlines from all of the Sunday Sun’s articles appeared on his screen. He was starting to scan through them when Sean came on the phone.

  “Mornin’, JT.” His grinning face came up in a window on the lower left of JT’s screen, a bit pixelated from the low-resolution cell phone camera he was using.

  “What the hell happened last night?”

  The grin faded. “Is this line secure?”

  JT frowned. “Just get in here pronto. I want to know what went down.”

  “Don’t sweat it boss. We’re cool.”

  “I’m not so sure,” he said thinking about Paul’s demeanor that morning. “I think…”

  “I said we’re cool,” Sean interrupted. “I’m pulling into the lot now. Meet you in ten.”

  The line went dead.

  JT continued scanning the list of headlines. “Ahh,” he muttered with a slight nod of his head. “Here it is: ‘Congress Authorizes Human Trial of Artificial Brain Cells.’”

  “Marlene, get me the text of the “Congress Authorizes Human Trial of Artificial Brain Cells” article, would ya?”

  “Displaying now.”

  The article came up on the screen, and Paul scanned it quickly. Took her long enough, he thought to himself.

 
“Marlene, give me a hardcopy of this, and set up a lunch meeting for me with Dr. Hingston, noon today.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  __

  Ten minutes later, Sean Lightbourne arrived. Much of JT’s scheduling and phone work could be handled quite adequately by Marlene, but Lois, his flesh and blood secretary, didn’t usually arrive until nine. Sean walked through he outer office unannounced and knocked on the partially opened door.

  JT looked up. Sean hadn’t waited for an invitation, and was already taking a seat across the desk from him.

  “Marlene, close the door.”

  “Yes, sir.” The door slowly closed, and the two men were alone in JT’s office.

  __

  When Paul Hingston received the call inviting him to lunch with JT Anderson, he was sure that he was getting fired.

  He couldn’t get his mind off of Sandi. He was still convinced that she must have found a way to steal his research. Two years of work down the tubes. I can’t believe she stabbed me in the back like that. He was resigned to losing his job, and was planning on spending all of his new-found free time investigating Sandi’s partner-in-crime, Dr. Sam Collier. He was sure that Collier was somehow hacking into his computer and stealing his work. The thought had briefly crossed his mind that Sean Lightbourne might be the culprit. After all, Sean was acting awfully suspicious when Paul walked in on him at the office last night, but he knew Sean too well. Sean was the ultimate company man. He figured that JT had seen the article in the Sunday Sun, and had instructed Sean to come in and make optical back-ups of all of the research files before he fired Paul. It all made sense.

  No hard feelings, buddy. I’d have done the same thing. He still liked Sean; he couldn’t help but like the guy. Sean was the best company Paul had known since Sandi left him. He had the kind of persona that inspired instant trust.