Chapter 13
Caleb loved Japan! All of the interconnected technology sang to him like a radio station tuned to his favorite songs. Nobody else could see it but him. Nobody else could feel it but him. All of that data that was generated by the masses swirled together like a mosaic of infinite information. As he and Kelley got out of the cab at Yukio's small house, he took in data like he was a dry sponge left out in a rain storm. He paused at the front gate, and just smiled as the bustling people going past splashed him with raw data. Mobile phones sent and received texts and videos, passing cars gave off status information from their on board computers, the cities automated control systems whirred and hummed with information, and he felt much like he thought a dog might feel rolling around on a freshly cut lawn.
All of this information would drive a normal person insane. Caleb just looked at it like a flock of birds chirping in a tree. Every little bit of information absorbed by his unique mind was processed and used to help him in his quest. He wanted to be recognized as a human being, and not some genetic experiment. He had the paperwork, all of the forms and minutiae that made up the government’s idea of a citizen. He wanted a real birth certificate though. Barring that, he wanted acknowledgment that he was a human being, and a citizen of a government. He almost didn't care which one at this point.
All of these new thoughts and feelings ran through his mind like a stream of murky water. While he and Kelley slowly made their way to the front door of Yukio's house, Caleb stopped to look at some small tomatoes growing in his side yard. The little crimson orbs caught and held his attention, and he dropped his backpack to go look at them.
“Look at these!” He gestured to Kelley.
Kelley hardly slept in two days. Not only that, she had an epic case of jet lag from schlepping across the Pacific ocean in a plane that was meant for short state to state hops. Every attempt at slumber was blocked by either her restless mind, or persons trying to apprehend them. Her training as a flight attendant helped with the anxiety of flying commercially, but it didn't really touch on what to do when attack helicopters started shooting at you. So, she was in no mood to cater to Caleb's endearing fascination with all things new and living.
“Caleb, it's just a tomato. You're all knowing, so you get how they work. You”, she paused to let out a most involuntary yawn, “eat them.” She finished as her bag fell from her hands.
He looked at the little fruit. He knew the chemical composition, the genus and heirloom status, and even the soil nutrient and moisture content, thanks to Yukio's little monitoring device staked into the soil. It churned out data like a small radio, and Caleb crouched down to gently squeeze the little fruit as it hung on the vine. In all of his infinite knowledge, he still didn't know what one of these tasted like.
“You can eat that one, if you like.” The small bamboo gate that opened to the side yard swung open and a middle-aged Japanese man came out to meet them. He had salt and pepper hair, and he was wearing a short sleeved shirt and slacks. Kelley watched Caleb light up like a child meeting a long missed parent, and she couldn't help but feel a little left out. She knew that when he was virtual, he spent a fair amount of time speaking with people online. It was different to see this all take place in person.
Caleb reflexively moved over to Yukio and bowed dutifully. Yukio reciprocated the formality, and Caleb reached out and pulled the small man into a bear hug.
“Caleb- you're squishing me!” Yukio managed to grunt out.
He set his friend back down and smiled with child-like delight. “It's so good to see you in person Yukio san.” Caleb said to him. He then broke into a seamless rapid fire of Japanese that had Kelley raising her eyebrows at him. He knows Japanese too?
Yukio responded, and after a while they both returned to speaking English.
While Caleb followed Yukio into the side yard, he hung back and spoke with Kelley. “He says he wants to use English from here out. I guess he needs the practice, and he is looking forward to us being here to facilitate that.” He said with giddy enthusiasm.
“What are we doing here by the way? I get that we needed to hang low until we find a way to deal with Allied Biotech, but couldn't we do that somewhere they speak English? Japan is like a different planet.” Kelley groaned in her exhausted state.
As they stepped into the ground floor kitchenette of Yukio’s modern little house, Caleb turned and held her close. His firm, warm body embraced her like a blanket. All of a sudden, she felt like she could take on anything. His touch was so honest and sincere. She knew that he needed help adapting to life as a physical human. She would do anything for him. He placed a slow, lingering kiss on her lips and said,
“Thank you for being so understanding. When I was still virtual, Yukio was the first person that I spoke to that treated me like a human being. While other professors or academics would treat me like a machine, or some kind of novelty, Yukio was sensitive to my emotions like a person would be to another human. He was never condescending or rude when I asked something out of place. Every little bit of naivete was Yukio's call to arms to make me smarter and more lifelike. I owe much of what I know about humanity to this man, and he has agreed to help me channel and control my abilities.”
There was a small loft-style bedroom upstairs. Kelley looked at the thin mattress that was sitting on the floor. Without thinking, she dropped her bags and collapsed on it like she was dying.
“UGH! This is exactly what I wanted!” She said with her face planted firmly in the pillow.
“I'll leave you and your new friend to catch up.” He teased her with a chuckle.
In her fading consciousness she said, “Aren't you tired too?”
“No. I was inside of a computer for the last five years. I have some catching up to do.”
As Kelley slipped into a dreamless and exhausted sleep, Caleb went back down to speak with Yukio san.
There was a private plane flying over the dark Atlantic Ocean. In the opaque blackness, a woman drank from a champagne flute and checked the messages on her phone. She smiled, and sat up in the dimmed light of the cabin. After thumbing out a quick message in reply, she put the phone away in her bag and finished her bubbly drink.
Ivanna marveled at her position at Allied Biotech. In just ten short years, she went from a clerical position to the CEO's corner office. It helped that she was a Mensa member, and that she had an IQ of over 260. Finishing her MBA at the University of Bologna at the age of seventeen helped a lot too, but it was her mindset for controlling others that really brought her up.
She knew just the right things to say, and just the right things to do. If she needed to sleep with the owner of an upstart company to get them to agree to a merger, she would. If she had to dig through the trash to find sensitive info, she would do that too.
If she had to put a gun to the head of that man's child when he didn't follow through, she would do that as well.
As she had done so many times before, she was now heading out to fix a problem in person. With the small amount of alcohol in her system, she could focus on the problem at hand. She would not need sleep. Not until the task was finished. She had loose ends with the two named Evan and Charles. They were actively trying to fix their problems and account for the missing data that they had promised. Boone was with them, but he was an intermediate. If they failed, she had more things to deal with. It was no problem though. It never was.
She loved dealing with things in person. The visceral call of handling dilemmas like this was a siren song. She saw the glint of the chrome Desert Eagle automatic handgun in her handbag. It fired a huge 10mm round that could punch a hole the size of a man's fist in a cinder block wall. She trained for months just to be able to hold onto the thing so it didn't launch out of her small hands every time she fired it. Now, she could drop a man from thirty yards with it. Well, at least what was left of him when he hit the ground...
Now, her thoughts turned to this person named “Caleb”. Since he was a newly manufac
tured human of some kind, he wasn't in any image databases. All of her best IT guys weren't able to find him. There was no facial matching to a face that wasn't in the system. He would turn up eventually. They always do. You can run, or you can hide, but you can't do both forever. All tracked animals tire eventually, and she knew it was just a matter of time before he and his little girlfriend would stop and beg for mercy. Unless, they turned to fight as cornered animals are wont to do.
Caleb sat up through the night and browsed the Internet like a child. He had accessed data for years, but doing it as an AI in a virtual simulation was so much different than this. While his fingers clacked away at the little laptop, he could hear Yukio cooking on the little stove. He was singing to himself, and Caleb could also hear Kelley snoring upstairs, making a sound like she was sawing wood.
He was glad to be here with her. Somehow, he knew everything would be alright. He knew there would be strife and pain, but that was part of being human. Thoughts of the world news spun in his head like a whirlpool, as he browsed the news sites. There was talk of Genetitech, and its precipitous stock plunge, but no info on the real cause of the blast. There was little mention of the C.A.L.E.B project that had gone viral a month before. The hyper-informed world of the information age lost its focus quickly. He and Kelley could hide in plain sight for a bit while Yukio taught him everything he knew about machine/human logic. With his attuned technological stance, he would sense any information that might lead to his discovery by the people that were after them.
His thoughts clouded and darkened when he though back to Evan. He knew that dealing with him was a necessary evil, but he had no idea that he would be putting Kelley in so much danger by doing so. The images from the pool's camera systems were still embedded in his mind like a burn scar.
The next time he saw Evan, he would kill him. There was no going around it, and every bit of data that he compiled told him so.
Next to Caleb, a darkened light bulb blinked and flickered randomly while his pulse raced. He knew this was the beginning, the catalyst for controlling his new mind and abilities. He calmed himself, and the flickering subsided while Yukio brought in two steaming dishes of rice and fish. On top of Caleb's there was one solitary little tomato. It was the one from the garden! He picked it up with the chop sticks as if it was something he had done every day.
“It's your little tomato, Caleb chan.” Yukio said observantly.
“This is the first thing I've ever eaten, unless you count coffee.” He replied.
“Well, it is my honor to share this monumental event with you.” Yukio relied with a reverent smile.
Caleb placed the little tomato in his mouth and bit down. All of the data swirling in his head tried to process his sensations, but as he chewed the little tomato deliberately, his human hunger took center stage. He continued to eat while Yukio spoke about some of his work undertaken while Caleb was in the tank.
“I researched some old documents from the 1960's. It's back at my office, but I can show you tomorrow. It has to do with a most curious event that happened during a test of a new integrated circuit. You see, the older circuits were fixed gate processors. They had little microscopic switches that opened and closed when the electrical impulses told them to. This is what was used to make the calculations that computers use as 'memory'.” Yukio paused to roll some sticky rice into a ball. “There was a solid state components manufacturer that came to Yokohama during the U.S occupation. They had a new processor that featured dynamic gates comprised of a new metal that was being developed by the American Navy. The metal was an alloy called 'Nitinol'. This Nitinol was able to change its shape based on the processor’s temperature. The hotter it became, the more the chip's little switches would move and adjust.”
Caleb nearly swooned as his body began to process the fish and rice. His system flooded with endorphins and serotonin, and he could feel his mind calming at the rush. Was this why he couldn’t sleep? “So, this new alloy allowed for these static little switches to make their own adjustments?” He asked.
Yukio cleared his throat and said, “Oh no, much more than that! The entire processor became dynamic! It was able to channel and regulate its own power usage and temperature. It was a tiny little microchip that would not even be able to power a calculator today, but it had created its own framework to manage itself and its abilities! This firm had accidentally discovered artificial intelligence! Unfortunately, they were closed the next month by their parent company, and all of the original researchers on the project went back to work on other devices.”
Caleb had never heard of the little research firm, nor its parent company. In all of his exploration of the data that was online, he found this to be a little odd. “Why is it that I was never able to find anything on this? It would have been a big help to me.” He wondered aloud.
“This is older data. Much of it I purchased at an auction when they sold off the abandoned building that used to house the company. While everyone was scurrying to buy up the scientific equipment, I chose to bid on all of the full filing cabinets. I have spent the last ten years trying to make sense of what they were doing. It was not until we began correspondence that I was able to decipher some of the ideas that they had.” Yukio replied. “At any rate, I think that the data from the processor tells a lot about your abilities that you possess.”
“How so?” Caleb replied.
“I think that you have certain safeguards in place that prevent you from accessing your true potential. Just like that little microchip, your mind and body are conspiring to protect you from harm. How do you use your powers now?” He asked Caleb.
“Well, right now they only work if I get really angry. I think it may have something to do with heart rate or adrenal gland stimulation, but I'm not sure. If I get angry, I can 'see' and 'feel' more things, and from farther away. Normally, I can just see the data, but the angrier I get, the more I can feel it too. It becomes like a sort of clairvoyance, I guess. At first, you get a foggy picture, and then you get a clear picture. Finally, I get a real life object that I can touch with my mind.” Caleb felt odd trying to describe all of this to his friend. “Does..., that make sense?”
“Yes, very much so! Yukio said ecstatically. “Your machine logic from the time that you were created is still at work right now! But, it is able to work so much more efficiently due to the fact that your new human mind is so much more powerful that anything you had access to before.”
“But, I feel human. I have emotions and I process thoughts and actions based upon them, and my own need to protect Kelley and me. Do you think I still have computer-based calculations going on?” Caleb stopped to yawn loudly in the quiet little dining area.
Yukio observed Caleb's tired state. “I think you should rest, Caleb. Your new body is in need of slumber.”
“Oh, that reminds me. Were you able to pick up any yogurt?”
Yukio walked to the refrigerator and produced an economy-sized tub of plain, whole fat yogurt. It was comically large in comparison to the other foodstuffs around his little kitchen. After digging around in his cabinets, he found a large spoon and gave the tub to Caleb.
“This is just what the doctor ordered, thank you.” Caleb replied quietly. After consuming nearly half of the tub, he could feel his mind interfacing with the individual microbes that made up the living cultures in the yogurt. His bruised and cut knuckles from the encounter with Evan began to heal right in front of his eyes!
“Outstanding!” Yukio said in a shocked whisper. He watched as Caleb's hand healed over into new, undamaged flesh.
Caleb could feel other things happening as well. His muscles were being pumped with amino acids and rebuilt as he sat there. Soreness subsided, and he felt his mind growing that much sharper. He could almost see everything around him in its radio signature, he was that in tune! Another yawn escaped him. In spite of all these things, his mind still craved rest. He bid his friend good night, and headed up to the loft where Kelley was.
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