“What do you mean?”

“Your orders from Dr. Snaresbrook. This is when you stop working for the day and lie down. No excuses accepted, she said — but there is no reason you can’t lie down with your portable computer.”

Brian knew better than to protest. He gave one last long, lingering look at the laboratory — then led the way to the door and locked them all out. Major Wood was waiting outside.

“Just coming to get you,” he said. “I had a call from Dr. Snaresbrook that if you were not yet in your quarters that you were to be taken there immediately.”

“We’re on the way,” Brian said, putting up his hands in surrender. “The long arm of the doctor reaches everywhere.”

“You better believe it,” Ben agreed. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Brian was not surprised to discover that he was quartered in the barracks with the troops. “Right in the middle of the building,” Woody said. “You’ve got dogfaces on all sides, not to mention the guard stations. Here we are.”

The apartment was small but comfortable; sitting room, bedroom, kitchen and bath. His computer was on the worktable and his bag had been unpacked.

“Just pick up the phone when you want dinner — it will be brought up to you. Tonight’s meat loaf,” the Major added as he closed the door.

21

February 16, 2024

Brian could not fall asleep. It was the excitement of the move, the new bed perhaps, all of the things that had happened that day conspired to keep him awake. At midnight he decided to stop twisting and turning and do something about it. He threw back the covers and got out of bed. The room circuitry detected this, checked the time, then turned on the dimmed lights that were just enough to enable him to walk without stumbling. The medicine chest was not as kind to him. It had been programmed not to let anyone take medicine in the dark — and he blinked in the sudden glare when he opened the door. If you can’t sleep take two with a glass of water, the doctor had printed on the label. He did as instructed and made his way back to bed.

The dreams began as soon as he fell asleep. Confused happenings, bits of school, Paddy appeared in one of them, Texas sunshine, the glare of the sun on the Gulf. Blinking into its glare. Rising in the morning, setting in the evening. How beautiful, how wrong. Just an illusion. The sun stays where it is. The earth goes around the sun, around and around.

Darkness and stars. And the moon. Moving moon, spinning around the earth. Rising and setting like the sun. But not like the sun. Moon, sun, earth. Sometimes all three lined up and there was an eclipse. Moon in front of sun.

Brian had never seen a total eclipse. His father had, told him about it. Eclipse: La Paz, Mexico, in 1991. On July 11 the day became dark, moon in front of sun.

Brian stirred in his sleep, frowning into the darkness. He had never seen an eclipse. Would he ever? Would there ever be an eclipse here in the Anza-Borrego desert?

The equation to answer this should be a simple one. Just a basic application of Newton’s laws. The acceleration is inverse to the square of the distance.

Each object pulled by the other two.

Sun, earth, moon. A simple differential equation.

With just eighteen variables.

Set up the coordinates.

Distances.

The earth was how far from the sun?

The Handbook of Astronautics, figures swimming before him, glowing in the dark.

The distance from the earth to the sun at its nearest point.

The axes and degrees of inclinations of the earth and the moon’s orbits…

The precise elements of these orbits — their perihelions, velocities and eccentricities.

Figures and numbers clicked into place — and then it happened.

The differential equation began working itself out before him. Within him? Was he watching, living, experiencing? He murmured and twisted but it would not go away or stop.

Streaming by, number by number.

“November 14, 2031,” he shouted hoarsely.

Brian found himself shouting, sitting up in bed and soaked with sweat, blinking as the lights came on. He fumbled for the glass of water on the night table, drained most of it and dropped back onto the crumpled bed. What had happened? The experience had been so strong, the racing figures so clear that he could still see them. Too strong to be a dream -

“The IPMC. The implant processors!” he said aloud.

Had that been it? Had he in the dreaming state somehow accessed the computer that had been planted in his brain? Could he possibly have commanded it to run some procedure? Some program for solving the problem? This seemed to be what had happened. It had apparently solved the problem, then fed the solution back to him. Is this what had happened? Why not? It was the most logical, plausible, least frightening explanation. He called out to his computer to turn on, then spoke a description of what had happened into its memory, adding his theory as well. After this he fell into a deep and apparently dreamless sleep. It was well after eight before he woke again. He turned the coffeemaker on, then phoned Dr. Snaresbrook. Her phone answered him and said that she would ring him back. Her call came as he was crunching into a second slice of toast.

“Morning, Doc. I have some interesting news for you.” After he finished describing what had happened there was a long silence on the line. “You still there?”

“Yes, sorry, Brian, just thinking about what you said — and I believe you might very well be right.’’

“Then it is good news?”

“Incredibly good. Look — I’m going to shift some appointments around and see if I can’t get out there by noon. Is that all right with you?”

“Sounds great. I’ll be in the lab.”

He spent the morning skimming through his recovered backup notes, trying to get a feel for the work he had done, the research and construction — all of the memories the bullet had destroyed. It was a strange sensation reading what he had written, almost a message from the grave. Because the Brian who had written these notes was dead and would remain dead forever. He knew that there was no way that he at the age of fourteen would ever grow into the very same man of twenty who had written this first report, based on several years of research. In the end to build the world’s first humanlike intelligence.

Nor could he understand any of the shorthand notes and bits of program that his twenty-year-old self had written. He smiled ruefully at this and turned back to the first page. The only way to proceed was to follow everything, step by step. He would read ahead, whenever he could, to avoid dead ends and false starts. But basically he would have to recreate everything that he had done, do it all over again.

Dr. Snaresbrook phoned him at twelve-thirty when she arrived: he shut down his work and joined her in the Megalobe clinic.

“Come in, Brian,” she said, looking him up and down with a critical eye. “You’re looking remarkably fit.”

“I’m feeling that way as well. An hour or two reading in the sun every day — and a short walk like you said.”

“Eating well?”

“You bet — the army rations are very good. And look at this…” He took off his cap and rubbed the fuzz growing there. “A mini crew cut. It’ll be real hair one day soon.”

“Any pain from the incisions?”

“None.”

“Dizziness? Shortness of breath? Fatigue?”

“No, no and no.”

“I’m immensely pleased. Now — I want you to tell me exactly what happened, every detail.”

“Listen to this first,” he said, passing over a disk. “I recorded this just after I had the dream. If I sound sort of stoned it’s because I took that sleeping potion you gave me.”

“That fact alone is interesting. It was a tranquilizer and that might have been one of the contributing factors to the incident.”