Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) (34 page)

The crowd roared, many of them bursting to their feet to
vigorously applaud both the announcement and the Neumanns. Paul’s skin turned a
bright red as the spotlight swung and caught both him and Capie in its
brilliant glare. Gulping wildly, with a deer in the headlights look, both he
and Capie hesitantly raised their hands and listlessly waved at the audience.
In return, the crowd applauded all the more vigorously.

“Let’s show them what a real Kalgoorlie welcome is!” the
amplified voice of Professor Fergerson shouted. “Come on down, Peter and Catlin!
Come on down and meet the wonderful citizens of Kalgoorlie!”

Stunned, the Neumanns could barely believe this turn of
events. With encouragement and helping hands from those around them, they were
forced to stand and make their stumbling way down the steps and over to the
stage. There, amidst the continuing yells and applause, Fergerson extended a
hand, gently taking Capie by the arm and assisting her in her slow walk to
center stage. Paul followed along uncertainly.

“Ladies and gents, the Neumanns!” screamed Fergerson into
the microphone.

More thunderous applause followed and Paul hesitantly took a
small bashful bow.

Then Fergerson held up his other hand and the audience
gradually grew quiet.

“Let’s hear from them, yes?” he said and with no further
warning than that, thrust the microphone at Paul.

Who eyed it as if it were the deadliest most venomous snake
on Earth.

“Speech! Speech!” screamed the audience, clapping their
hands in unison.

His pulse racing and on the verge of hyperventilating, Paul
cast a small spell on himself to calm his nerves and to help him figure out
what to say. His trembling hand reached out to gingerly take the microphone and
then hold it up to his face.

There was only one silver lining to this situation. With the
spot light in his eyes, he couldn’t see beyond the edge of the stage. So, he
could—and did—pretend that there was no one there. He was only speaking to the
dark.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he started slowly. “I can’t tell you
what a great honor it is to be here and to be accepted as friends in this great
city.”

There were yells of appreciation and more cries for him to
continue.

“I can honestly say,” when he was finally able to continue,
“that I have never been any place like this before! You people are absolutely
fantastic! My wife and I love it here! And, on the subject of the movie that
I’m sure most of you want to know about, I am terribly sorry, but I can’t say
very much about it. I’m sure you know how it is, the secrecy involved. Why,
there are even things about it that even
I
don’t know yet! But I can
tell you this much. I am building a, uh, spacecraft…a, uh, highly important
part of the plot, where most of the action will take place, in fact. And I can
guarantee everyone in this town, that when we are ready, you will be totally
surprised by our production!”

The entire audience stood and thundered their applause, many
of them stamping their feet and shouting their praise.

Paul bowed more deeply this time, grinning self-consciously
before turning and giving the microphone back to the professor.

As they headed back to their seats, Capie leaned close to
whisper.

“You’re getting better at lying,” she said softly.
“Congratulations.”

“It’s called prevarication, my dear,” he muttered back at
her.

After they resumed their seats, Paul was so consumed with
relief that he didn’t hear anything else Fergerson said. It wasn’t until the
play actually began that he was able to focus on the stage.

And on that stage, a number of actors dressed as Daleks, an
alien cyborg race, could be seen. Paul had to admit, the costumes that must
have been thrown together at virtually the last moment were actually pretty
good.

One of the Daleks rolled forth, the lights on top of the
rotating head beginning to flash.

In an amplified and distorted voice, it said, “Report for
the Supreme Master.”

Another Dalek, from the other side of the stage, rolled
forward. “Speak!”

“Prison ship has landed. The Traitor is now being brought
here.”

Paul settled back to enjoy the play as best as he could.

Hotel Restaurant

York Hotel

Hannan Street

Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

October

Sunday 7:14 a.m. AWST

I
t
started in earnest the very next morning, with the busboy in Restaurant 259 of
the York Hotel. The young man was a college student, a member of the drama
department, and one of the walk-on extras in the play, specifically one of the
Daleks. He asked about the movie the Neumanns were making, what parts were
available and when auditions would start.

Capie tried explaining to him that the auditions wouldn’t be
any time real soon, but the young man was terribly disappointed in that answer
and pressed her for further details.

The news all over the Internet and from TV from the previous
day depressed them even more. A not quite successful and very savage attempt
had been made to assassinate Israel’s Minister of Internal Security. Three
innocent bystanders and two of his security detail were dead.

Israel’s counter attack had been swift and deadly, launching
an airstrike on selected Syrian targets. The death toll was unknown but would
likely be in the hundreds.

As they left the restaurant and passed through the lobby,
the desk clerk gave them a message from a local newspaper reporter, requesting
an interview.

Suspecting that more was coming, Paul invited Capie to spend
the rest of the day in Perth, to play tourist and to get away from the
ambitious wannabes and hustlers. Capie quickly agreed and they spent a very
enjoyable day taking a river boat cruise, visiting the Art Gallery of Western
Australia, and attending a performance of the Western Australia Symphony
Orchestra.

Later that evening, when they returned to the hotel, there
was a set of parents waiting for them in the lobby and two additional messages
at the desk. Using a few magic spells, they managed to cut short the plea of
the parents to include their son in the movie cast. Of the messages from the
desk clerk, one was from a business and the second was yet another message from
the newspaper reporter. They ignored both.

Over the next few days, the situation rapidly deteriorated
even further. No matter where they went for their meals, they were met by
somebody that wanted to sell them something for the movie or by somebody that
wanted to be in the movie or had a relative that wanted the same.

The messages continued to pile up at the front desk—various
businesses, artists, reporters, parents, bureaucrats, Professor Fergerson, and
even two from Dean Gilbert of the college!

The Neumanns made several attempts to explain to people that
they weren’t ready to start making a movie just yet, which had the virtue of
being an honest statement as far as it went. But they quickly figured out that
they were wasting their breath. And although their magical powers helped them
to escape each situation that arose, both Paul and Capie were growing
increasingly aware that the entire state of affairs was rapidly spiraling out
of control.

• • • •

“I’m tellin’ ya, Christchurch will be tough next weekend,”
insisted Captain Ryan Smith of United Flight number 6050, a Boeing 777-300
enroute from Auckland, New Zealand to Los Angeles, California. Cruising
smoothly along at 35,000 feet at 560 mph with George (the autopilot) engaged,
Smith and the co-pilot were fully involved once again in their favorite
pastime—the spirited debate of current rugby matches taking place in New
Zealand, a country where the game was taken very seriously and considered by
the majority to be the national sport.

“Naw,” argued the copilot, Jack Jones. “Canterbury is
looking really good to me. I still think it would be pretty tough for anyone to
topple ’em. They look deadly this season. They’re going to take the cup.”

“Ethan is for me the greatest 10 that has ever played the
game,” Smith countered. “When the…” And then he stopped, leaning forward in his
seat and looking out the windscreen over the consoles.

“Crikey, would you lookie there,” Smith said, with a nod out
the windows.

“What?” responded Jones, craning his neck to look in the
indicated direction.

The night sky outside the cockpit was virtually black but,
as was typical so far from any city, the stars shone brilliantly in the
firmament. And to the east, the horizon was just beginning to lighten toward
dawn.

So it was fairly easy to see what Smith was pointing at.

“Blow me down,” muttered Jones. “A signal flare?”

“I know bugger all,” Smith replied, expressing his ignorance
of the answer.

Below on the ocean’s surface, slightly ahead of them and to
the right of their flight path, a dancing white light could be seen. Dancing
was not quite the right verb, but Smith could think of no other choice that
came any closer. The light shifted back and forth, constantly changing size and
intensity, very effectively attracting their attention.

“Not the time to gawk. Where are we?” Smith asked, now using
his more professionally trained voice and reaching out to punch a couple of
buttons on the FMS, the Flight Management System. “Hmm, still south of the
equator.” He picked up his iPad and entered the latitude and longitude
information, running a quick check through the on-board WiFi system. “Looks
like Flint Island, that one. Maybe a castaway? Dunno. Go ahead, text our
sighting to Oakland using the CPDLC,” he told Jones.

Who nodded without replying, typing in a report into the
Controller-Pilot Data Communications Link, sending it to the Air Traffic Center
for their airspace located in Oakland, California.

“Those blokes down below are lucky,” Smith noted casually.
“We’re more than a hundred miles east of our normal flight path. Otherwise,
we’d never seen that light.”

Jones agreed. “Diverting to avoid the storm to the west, as
we did. Yeah, lucky. Whoever’s down there, hoorey. A bird will drop in on ya
soon!”

• • • •

Capie rolled her eyes and sighed. “What are we going to do
about the people of Kalgoorlie?”

“We do need to do something, don’t we?” Paul glanced around
the open pit mine and up at the spacecraft in front of him. “I’m a week away
from completing the ship, then a few days for loading—maybe as much as two
weeks before we are ready for liftoff. You are about that far away from the chutzpah
ceremony. Are you suggesting that we leave Kalgoorlie?”

Folding her arms across her chest, his wife gave thought to
the question. “We can’t do that just yet, can we? Not today, at any rate. There
are all our supplies in Warehouse 13. If we had another place to move them all
to…but since the ship isn’t ready yet, we don’t.” She sighed even more heavily.

“That’s pretty much what I think as well,” Paul admitted
with a thoughtful frown. “So the limitation is a place to store our supplies. I
can fix that, I think, by taking a day and excavating a storage room here at
the mine. After we move all the supplies here, we can check out of the York
Hotel and find another city or town to stay in. All it costs us is a longer
portal distance from here to the place we choose to stay. No sweat.”

“And the people of Kalgoorlie? What do we say to them?” Capie
asked expectantly.

Paul paused a moment, gauging his wife’s emotional state.
“We can make some excuse to the people of Kalgoorlie. We can tell them that we
have to go back to Hollywood for consultations or something.”

Capie slowly smiled. “I like that idea.”

“Then I’ll get started tomorrow in the morning, clearing out
a section of the wall at the back of the mine for a storage room,” he replied
with a grin.

• • • •

Later that evening, as they were returning to their motel
room and Paul was closing the hallway door behind himself and Capie, he noticed
that Daneel seemed to be waiting for them on his monitor display, his quantum
computer sitting on one corner of the room’s small desk.

“Hi, Dad! Hi, Mom! I’m so glad to see you both. I have
news!” their son announced, practically bobbing up and down with suppressed
excitement.

Once again, Paul was struck by how fast the young man was
growing up. Daneel had been ‘gone’ the last few days, researching on the
internet for an answer to the question as to the how and the why that the first
Daneel had died when given magical powers. Now his physical features seemed to
be that of a twenty year old man, a significant change from the last time Paul
had seen him.

“What about?” Capie asked.

“About your research?” Paul inquired, taking a seat on the
end of the bed.

“Yep,” Daneel replied, seemingly ready to burst he was so
giddy. “Most of those error codes you gave me didn’t help all that much. They
were either general types of errors that could have meant any one of a dozen
different coding failures, or they were secondary errors, triggered by another
error. But there were two that were different! And they led me on a merry
chase, those two did! But I think I finally got it figured out!”

“You two!” Capie scoffed, as she headed into the bathroom.
“You’re going to talk techno-babble again, I just know it.” And she shut the
door behind her.

“Don’t mind her,” Paul told Daneel, with a knowing smile.
“Go ahead. What did you find out?”

“It’s an incompatibility problem between the magical powers coding
subroutines and the bus interface circuitry for the quantum processor!” he
proudly declared with complete confidence. “It creates disruptions in the synchronization
of all bus transfers. The effect is not unlike a Normal when he’s drunk. Slurred
speech, disorientation of senses, loss of motor-control and so forth.”

Paul nodded with approval. So, it had been an
incompatibility problem with the hardware after all. “Yes, that matches what I
saw. Anything else?”

“Yep! The disruptions would generate a ton of bad
information, a sort of cascade of meaningless data that will even negatively
impact file headers in the data packets. Eventually, the whole structure would
crash. I’m amazed that the, ah, first Daneel could have kept going for more
than a few minutes, the incompatibility is so bad!”

Paul looked away, feeling uncomfortable with the reminder of
the first Daneel’s death. “It sounds like you are on the right track. Any
suggestions on how to fix the problem and then how to test it to see if it
works?”

“Well, that’s the bad news,” his son said, now appearing a
great deal more subdued than before. “The easiest solution, for the next
generation of A.I.s, is to alter their coding, make it compatible. I’m pretty
sure it could be done. And also to add an error checking subroutine to the
quantum processing stream. That will help catch any stray problems. But for me,
that solution is not an option.”

Paul blinked and leaned back in surprise. “Why not? Oh, I think
I see. Your basic coding is not the same anymore, is it? It’s due to your
‘age.’ Your coding has evolved.”

“Exactly,” Daneel agreed. “My coding is now much too
inter-related. It would be impossible to find and fix all the interconnected
subroutines. In my case, only a hardware modification would fix the basic
problem. Oh, sure, I would also need a software patch to go with it, but only a
minor one. The hardware mod is harder.”

Paul could see the concern in his son’s eyes. A hardware mod
would take time. Moreover, Daneel would have to be ported over from his current
machine to a new one, which might involve risks all of its own. From an
efficiency point of view, it would simply be easier to generate a new A.I. progenitor
with the necessary coding change.

Of course, the current edition of Daneel would then become obsolete
and superfluous. Not only would he never acquire magical powers, he was afraid
he might even be scrapped in favor of a newer version!

Paul smiled and shook his head at Daneel. “Well, then,
Daneel, if a hardware mod is needed, a hardware mod is what we are going to do.
You have all the drawings and specifications. Your next task is to design a new
and modified motherboard with the changes needed. I have a couple of other
ideas for upgrades that I would like to see you incorporate as well.”

“All right! Thanks, Dad!”

Paul then waved a finger at him. “There’s something else,
too, that I want you to do. Figure out a way to test the mod without risk to
you. Some sort of software simulator would be nice. Something that will let us
test the changes without actually putting you in danger. Understand?”

“Got it, Dad! And no problem, I already have a couple of
ideas for that! Got to go; I’ve got a lot of work to do! Bye!”

And the monitor went blank again.

Paul shrugged and headed for the bathroom door. “Kids and
their toys,” he muttered happily.

• • • •

McDougall swept through the foyer of his Rockcliffe Park
mansion in Ottawa, Canada in a very foul temper, the mansion servants catching
only a single glance of his face before hastily making themselves scarce. Three
Oni followed several steps behind the wizard, climbing the stairs in his
footsteps as he headed toward the upstairs den.

Smashing open the door of the room, McDougall stormed over
to the far wall, keying a special latch and waiting impatiently as a segment of
the paneling there opened on a silent hinge. Then, slapping his right hand on
the special safe installed there, he concentrated on a specific series of
magical mental impulses.

A very weighty black metal door, nearly two feet square and
a foot thick, ponderously swung opened. McDougall thrust a hand through the
opening, snatching an object just inside and bringing it out into the light.

An armband a foot long, specifically a talisman. Sliding it
over his left arm, McDougall looked at it in supreme satisfaction.

“Now!” he hissed menacingly. “Aduir! Get your sorry hide in
here!”

The Oni practically skittered into the room, keeping as much
distance between itself and the wizard as it dared.