Professor Firdo

The smooth red exterior of the BCC – Brain Connect Capsule – slid open with a low hiss. Inside it Professor Firdo lay on a padded leather bed, with an elevation for his head. His eyes, previously closed, now opened. He sighed quietly and sat up, swinging his legs so his bare feet touched the metal floor in the unornamented room.

A young woman with almond-shaped eyes, wearing a white lab coat and clutching a thin translucent screen, cleared her throat gently. The sound was low, but in the absolute silence inside the room it did it’s job. The professor looked up at her with his sharp, blue eyes. They were set in an old, weathered face, with white curly hair framing it.

“How did it go?” the woman asked, when it was clear Firdo wasn’t going to say anything unprompted.

The old man rubbed his forehead with two fingers before answering. “This isn’t working. I don’t think it can be done like this.”

“Like this?” The woman looked briefly down at her screen. Not because there was anything to see there – just a website with news headlines that constantly changed – but because she was trying to think of something to say. She looked back up. “We’ve been over this.” The corners of her mouth curled up in a – she thought rather hopeless – smile. “If you die then who’s going to teach me?”

Professor Firdo put on his white furry slippers, grabbed his cane that was propped up against the capsule, and walked with slow, seemingly painful, steps, to a chair next to a metal desk. He sat down, and fixed her with one of his disconcerting stares. “Yes. I cannot deny there is a significant risk of death using Deep Connect. After all, it has never been tested. But for science we must sometimes take great ri –”

“Science?” The woman, her name was Annabel, lifted up and picked at the screen in her hands, quickly finding the page she wanted. She took long strides until she was standing in front of the professor. She showed him the page. “I know why you’re doing this. Why you want to use that infernal machine to do what no one has done before. What is forbidden. True, you’re the only man who could potentially do it, especially, with this ...” she looked around her “... place you built. But please, don’t pretend you’re doing it for science.”

The professor just stared at the screen. His hands reached up and touched it with a strange dreamlike quality, like it was instinct that moved them, not his mind. Annabel let go of the screen, backing a few steps away. She was still a little angry, but now her mind was contemplating what the hell had she done? She wasn’t actually going to show him that. It just ...

Firdo's face changed from stunned to ... something else. He crumpled up the screen in his hands, and stood up. He took his cane and released the screen. It fell to the floor, instantly returning to it’s former form. The professor seemed to take no notice and stepped on it on his way towards Annabel.

Annabel backed even further. She had never seen such fury on the professor’s face. Not even when she inadvertently poured coffee over one of his genuine paper books, a copy that was both rare and priceless. He had been mad, but not like this.

Finally the professor stopped. “You will leave this station now, or I will have the station’s droids throw you out.” His perfectly calm voice somehow hurt more than any shout. Firdo turned around, walked to, and sat back down in his chair. He looked up at her with a hard face. “This is not a joke, and it's my final decision. I will not change my mind. Go. Find another teacher. I have work to do.” He swiveled the chair so he faced away from her.

Annabel just stared. “Bu – But.” Just like that? She found tears forming unbidden in her eyes. She reached up and wiped them away with her hand. She just hadn’t wanted him to ... She turned around, hardening her resolve, or trying her very best to. Foolish old man, she thought, and walked to the door.

Before she went through, she took one last look back at the white-haired old man. Then she walked through the metal circle, which dissolved as she approached.

***

“Station. Status on Ms. Annabel Carlock?” Firdo asked, after a brief session in the kitchen, where he had eaten his fill. He was now back at his desk. The professor hated what he had just done to that poor girl. Unlike some of his previous trainees he actually liked Annabel. And she had helped him a great deal with designing Deep Connect, despite her reservations about it. But this was necessary. If she was here she’d stop him.

“Anna took one of the cruisers and is currently on her way to Caston 18,” the station’s pleasant male-sounding voice replied.

The professor nodded. “Good.” He bent down, retrieved Annabel’s screen from the cold metal floor and put it on the desk. He pressed a few buttons until a video began playing. Firdo knew exactly what it was. In fact he had watched it far too many times. An aerial view of a familiar serene house. The otherworldly green light filling the camera field, and then ... no house. Just a crater.

He had never been certain about what happened precisely, but he knew enough. The first version of the illegal construct that was built into his space station had been in that house. And somehow, some way, it got unstable enough to completely destroy it. Luckily him and his wife had been having a romantic dinner at the moment – or that’s what people said. Luckily. That’s what the news story said too. But he had never felt very lucky about that fact.

For there had been two persons inside that house. One of whom he would gladly have sacrificed his life for.

He stood up, a new resolve shining in his pale blue eyes. He took his cane and walked over to the open capsule. “Station. Recalibrate the BCC for Deep Connect.”

“Sir, I am obliged to remind you that using Deep Connect could be fatal.”

Firdo sat down and removed his slippers. “I am aware. Do it.” He discarded his cane and then lay down on the leather-clad bed.

“Recalibration complete.”

Firdo took a deep breath. “Commence connection.”

“Sir, won't you … reconsider?”

The professor’s voice was harsh. “Do you want me to override you?”

A brief pause, and then, “Commencing connection.”

“Good.”

A low hissing noise, and then the capsule shut itself off, creating total darkness inside. Firdo braced himself, for those two stings at his temples. He winced slightly as he felt them. And then ...

Colors. Sounds. Text. Numbers. Being connected to a computer as powerful as his space station housed – in fact probably the most advanced computer in the known galaxies, with the possible exception of High Command’s Cluster Net – was indescribable and has few accurate comparisons. But using something like Deep Connect ... Firdo could hardly believe what he had created. What he had achieved.

It was incredible! Everything at his virtual fingertips. In what felt like only seconds he had solved problems he hadn’t even began to imagine as a limited human being. He wanted to be like this forever. But – his mind focused itself like a laser beam – he had a job to do.

The machine – the drive – he had built, the one that had destroyed his house and shattered his marriage, was unfortunately infinitely complex. Trying to control it as a human was comparable to a hummingbird attempting to make it’s way through billion meters of steel armed with tiny bucket of water.

Firdo had thought that he could make it work with the ship’s computer in normal connection mode, but it was too slow. Far too slow. In that mode he was still mostly using his human brain. No, this was the only way. He could feel it. And right now, he thought he could do it.

He accessed the portion of the computer with all the information on his machine and dived right in. It was infinitely complex, but it was also infinitely powerful. In theory he could use it to do anything, in the fullest meaning of the word. In theory.

Numbers, symbols, logical problems. Even in this mode it felt ... beyond his understanding. Deeper, he went deeper, as deep as he dared. Like a camera lens adjusting things began to come into a startling focus. Yes! He understood now. How he could ...
Suddenly his head – a head he had forgotten he had – began to throb. Painfully.

Just a little bit longer he thought. He was so close. Deeper, deeper. That’s it. He would have no other chance like this. He knew, beyond a doubt, that as soon as the Deep Connect was over he’d remember nothing of what he now knew. And that no pure machine could record or even understand it.

He activated the forbidden construct. They key to reality – and unreality. It spun. The energy was amazing. Powerful felt so incredibly inadequate to describe it. In fact, language felt inadequate. He screamed with a voice that wasn't a voice, across a void, a dark dark void. The scream was a name. One name.

Lisa.

The name of his daughter, who had just been a baby when she died nearly twenty-two years ago, along with her babysitter.

***

In a small cruiser with the fascinating name PX-13B, Annabel sat, her eyes focused on some point far away, with her hands in her lap. She had discarded the lab coat in favor of a green angora sweater. That’s when she felt it. Just for a second. Like something blazing white hot under her skin.

“PX, did something … anything … abnormal happen?”

“Well ... depends on what you mean by abnormal.” The cruiser’s voice was like a young man’s. “There was an unusual spike in some of my more ... uncertain sensors.”

Annabel understood. Those were put there to measure waves and particles even scientists weren't sure of what did, or why they existed. Waves and particles such as those that might be created if a certain terrible machine was activated. She thought for a moment about contacting the Firdo's station, but instinctively knew that if something had happened it had happened. She’d rather see for herself. “PX. Turn around. Back to the station. Priority speed. Get there at once.”

“Understood. Buckle your seatbelt.”

Annabel stared at the – mostly unused – cruiser’s manual controls in lieu of anything else to identify as the ship’s face.

“It’s a ... this little joke, I know of course we don’t have or need seatbelts because of the ...”

“Just go,” Annabel sighed, and silently cursed whoever had thought of giving AI's a sense of humor.

“Alrighty then.”

The cruiser took a sharp turn, unfelt by Annabel and sped back to where it they had come from. It took a few hours to get there. Once there Annabel immediately exited the cruiser and travelled through long corridors with monotonous lack of decorations and a strong theme of steel and plastic. She met no one, which was expectable since she and the professor were the only inhabitants of the station.

Finally she got to the capsule room. She took a sharp intake of breath when she saw the woman in there. She was beautiful, with long golden hair and the face of an angel. The woman looked up at Annabel with startlingly vacant blue eyes. “Who are you?” the woman asked. She was clad in a simple white dress.

Annabel breathed fast. Instead of answering she ran to the deep red capsule. “Station, open the capsule.”

“I’m – I’m sorry Anna. He insisted. There was nothing I could do.”

“Just open it!” she hissed at the air. She glanced back at the woman, who merely watched her with those horrible eyes.

The capsule opened. Professor Firdo lay inside. Even if Annabel hadn’t seen the blood coming from his nose she would still have known he was dead.

“Should I attempt resuscitation?” the station said in it’s smooth voice. Like an older, elegant man’s.

Annabel slowly shook her head, tears forming and flowing unchecked from her eyes. “You know as well as I do that that’s illegal.”

“I would risk it,” the ship replied.

“I know. But if the police got here, and they found ...” She glanced back at the woman, who now stood up, looking curiously at the professor.

The woman focused on Annabel. “Who was that man?”

Annabel hesitated. “Station. This is … Lisa, isn't it?”

“Yes. I confirmed it with a DNA scan some time ago.”

Annabel turned to Lisa. “That’s your father.”

The woman looked at the white-haired man, and then back at Annabel. “Then why don’t I remember him?” Her curious, yet completely innocent look stirred something inside of Annabel. She knew that this woman was her responsibility now. Maybe the professor had even intended that.

She looked at Firdo for a moment. “Congratulations,” she said to the deceased professor. Then she gave the ship’s computer very specific instructions, using the authority the professor had given her in case of emergency. Clearly he had not revoked it yet, whether he had just forgot or not.

Annabel led the confused Lisa through the station and into PX-13B. “PX, as you fly away, give me a view of the station,” Annabel said, when both she and Lisa were seated. The large screen on the front of the small cruiser changed from the view ahead to the rear view. The impressive metal-colored station had always reminded Annabel of an ice cream cone.

Her order was followed when they were more than enough distance away. Red light swallowed the station. The entire brief explosion was shown on-screen in crystal clear clarity. And then the station was no more. Just rubble in space. “Wow.” Lisa turned to Annabel. “That was pretty.”

“Yeah.” Flashes ran unbidden through Annabel’s mind. Memories of her kind-hearted, slightly mad, usually grumpy professor. “Yeah. PX. Switch to front view.” The screen changed to show distant stars.

“Where to?” PX replied. “You never gave me a destination.”

Where to indeed? She turned to Lisa and gave her a quick smile. Lisa’s mother was dead. Annabel also knew that the professor had no living relatives. No one else to take care of Lisa, even if they somehow got past the problem of how to explain her. So they could go … anywhere.

Travelling far beyond light-speed, the small cruiser sped away.