Sigma One (26 page)

"And if he finds out?"

"He won't! Not if you're careful. Besides, that's not my department. That's what you're paid to do." She was toying with him now, and liked the fact he had listened to her without interrupting.

Pat mulled over her scheme and, although he tried, couldn't find any flaws in her logic. If he did as she suggested and built a lab where they could watch Mr. Grayson, they could certainly determine his prowess at thought-programming. The sample problem, too, was an ingenious way of tricking him. And, if they taped him while he successfully completed the programming of the guidance computer, he would have all the evidence he needed to prove to the committee that SIGMA ONE was more than just a concept. In that way, he could get the funding he needed, continue SIGMA ONE without revealing its purpose to Grayson, and probably get him to train one or two of the NSF's own men how to accomplish the same feat. If he could do that, scientists working for Pat could take SIGMA ONE operational. He was overwhelmed with the plan's elegance and simplicity.

"Brilliant, Amanda. Brilliant!"

"So I have the go ahead to offer Grayson a lab and expenses?"

"Of course you do."

"You mean it?"

"Yes."

Amanda beamed with pride. Earlier, she imagined he would probably reject her suggestions, not because she thought her plan was off the mark, simply because ever since the night Pat had rejected her, she had lost self-confidence. Now, sensing he actually thought her ideas were good, she was relieved and his acceptance gave her the courage she needed to ask what she had been waiting to ask ever since they started talking.

"Pat---------,             

"Yes."

"Thank you for getting me such a nice room in the Madonna Inn."

"You liked it?" He had hoped she would. As he spoke, he clearly pictured the beautiful grass-covered rolling hills surrounding the Inn. In his mind's eye, he could see the long curving driveway leading up to the massive brick and stucco entryway. He could also see Amanda, and he wished she were closer so he could thank her for what she had just done.

"Pat," Amanda said again. "I loved the place."

"I'm glad."

"And you know what?" Her voice was playful and child-like.

"What?"

"I wish you were here to share it with me."

And then she said it! "I love you, Pat!"

Without hesitation he responded. I love you too."

Pat reclined and sank into the chair, a worried smile still on his face. He was no longer suicidal as he had been before Amanda called, but he still felt uneasy--a strange mixture of hopeful anticipation at what Grayson might be able to do, and fear it wouldn't be enough.

At that moment, he heard the front door open and Sarah call his name. He quickly sat up in the chair again. "Gotta’ go now, Amanda. Good luck."

Before she could reply she was disconnected, and although the ending of their conversation was abrupt, she hardly noticed. He had said he loved her too.

Pat immediately got up and his fear for the project's fate was swiftly replaced by his own guilt. He then forced a smile and went into the kitchen to meet his wife.

That night they made love more savagely and passionately than they had in weeks as Pat tried to lose himself in his wife's arms, all the while thinking of Amanda and SIGMA ONE.

Burt sat up suddenly in his bed and stared at the clutter surrounding him. He then noticed the clock read six o'clock. He was somewhat disoriented as are most people when they awaken from such a sound sleep as he was in, so he didn't immediately rouse. Slowly, as he fixed on the big blue digital numbers, the two zeroes changed to a zero and a one and the change startled him and brought him back to consciousness. He rubbed his eyes and then turned his attention toward the pile of wood which lay at the opposite end of the room near the wall and recognized the splintered mass for what it used to be--his chair. He realized then what he had done earlier as he became more and more wide awake. Although normally he would have felt ashamed for letting his anger get the best of him and acting as he did, he felt nothing at this time. He wasn't normal and he hadn't been since he first linked. Since then, all his past inhibitions had been eliminated and replaced instead with a strange sense of power which ebbed and flowed through him like the tide filling and then emptying into a lagoon, and as this power surged through him, it kept him slightly off kilter as a result. When he looked at the wood again, he laughed. Anti-social, destructive behavior meant nothing to him anymore, and this realization pleased him. He finally felt free.

His headache was gone now that he was awake and he could feel the power begin to take hold as he got out of bed. He had little less than an hour to get ready for his date with Amanda and even before finishing his shower, he began to anticipate how her silken body would feel next to his. Thoughts of Debbie never entered his mind.

After drying off, he went over to the stack of clothes on the floor and picked through them to try and find an acceptably unwrinkled shirt and clean pair of pants to wear. He picked up first one and then another, examined each article of clothing and then pitched it aside. None of them suited him. He finally settled on a yellow cotton pullover shirt and a pair of old cutoffs and quickly pulled them on. It was obvious to him as he looked in the mirror, that now, because of his earlier actions, he'd be forced to buy a new suit. The clock read ten minutes after six as he grabbed his keys and ran out to his car. He knew he had to hurry if he was to be on time.

Burt reached his old red Camaro, started it, and even before it was warm, gunned it and burned rubber for nearly forty feet as he sped down the hill from the campus toward 101. At the intersection, he ignored the light and cut his car sharply to the left, oblivious to the traffic stopped on either side. Fortunately, he managed to skinny through the intersection without incident and then headed for the business district to get money for his date and something more suitable to wear.

As he approached another intersection, he saw a local police car come up from behind him, so he cautiously slowed to a stop, uncertain if they had seen his reckless driving. He prayed they hadn't. He didn't have time to be stopped.

The black and white cruiser pulled up next to him, but neither policeman inside seemed the least bit interested. Burt breathed a sigh of relief and then decided he'd have a little fun at the officer's expense. While the policemen sat there waiting for the light to change, Burt deepened his concentration momentarily and linked with the computer-controlled ignition system of the cruiser. With only a minor amount of reprogramming, Burt was able to cause the fuel injection system to stick in the on position the minute the gas pedal was touched. As he waited for the light to change, he smiled to himself as he anticipated what would happen next. Just then, a panel truck entered the intersection as the light turned from green to yellow. Already half-way through, it proceeded to make a left hand turn in front of Burt and the police car. As expected, the moment the light turned green for them, and red for the truck which was crossing their path, the officer took his foot off the brake and gently applied pressure to the gas pedal. That was all it took. Instantaneously the car jumped forward as the pedal sank to the floor, and before the officer could get his foot to the brake pedal, his cruiser broadsided the back wheels of the old panel truck, hitting it with such force it was turned completely around and ended up facing the opposite direction from which it came. The cruiser then continued through the intersection, until it hit a mailbox on the other side of the street. It finally bounced up over the curb and stopped suddenly, steam ejecting from the cracked radiator. The two policemen were shaken but unhurt having been restrained by their seatbelts and were just looking at one another in disbelief as Burt passed in front of them. As he drove past, he smiled and nodded his head. Neither cop returned his greeting.

In five more blocks, Burt reached his destination, the First Interstate Bank, and as he pulled his car next to the curb, he unconsciously reached for his wallet he had thrown into the passenger's seat next to him. Once the car was stopped, he got out, wallet in hand, and approached the insta-teller machine in front of the building, fumbling for his cash withdrawal card as he did. Hurriedly, he pushed the plastic card into the slot at the insta-teller and waited for the security window to open. When it finally raised, he punched in his five digit code and waited while the computer validated his card's authenticity. When it was satisfied, the screen flashed a welcome message along with a noxious advertisement telling the user how great it was to have him as a customer. It then asked him for his request.

Burt stared at the screen and then reached to his forehead and closed his eyes, allowing his concentration to deepen. Once again, the electromagnetic field created by his mind was formed, and in a span of less than twenty seconds, the computer-generated message in front of him was reprogrammed with another, this time of his choosing. Instead of greeting the next customer and displaying the same message it had for Burt, he programmed a little pleasant surprise for whoever chose to use that particular insta-teller after him. As a part of this mischievousness, he also altered his account balance. Now instead of him having one thousand and twenty-eight dollars, when he punched in a request to view his balance to verify his reprogramming was successful, the decimal point indeed had migrated (as it had been told) two place R to the right. Burt smiled as he read the new balance now shown as one hundred and two thousand, eight hundred dollars.

Immediately after this message appeared, the bank computer followed the last instruction given it by Burt when he programmed it. The cash withdrawal window opened and belched out fifty, crisp new twenty dollar bills, after which, he pocketed the money, turned and got back into his car. As he pulled away and headed toward Mr. John's, a fashionable and very exclusive men's shop where he would put his new-found booty to good use, he stared at the rear-view mirror and watched as another college student like himself approached the window. Turning the corner, he saw the look of surprise on the student's face as he read the message he programmed which read: "You are the 100th person today to use this machine. As a token of First Interstate's appreciation for your patronage you have won 100 twenty dollar bills. Have a good day!" The machine then spit out the money to the student's delight.

Burt narrowly missed a parked car as he completed rounding the corner, his concentration still focused on the student.

Thirty minutes later, now dressed in a three-piece Christian Dior charcoal and gray pin-striped suit and minus four hundred dollars, Burt pulled his car to a stop in front of the Madonna Inn. He then went inside and picked up the house phone and called Amanda.

While he waited, he counted the remaining twenty dollar bills he had and tried to determine just how normal he was feeling. He rolled up his sleeve and took his pulse and then looked at himself in the mirror which hung on the wall next to the house phone. He did this first, to ensure he did indeed have the money he had gotten earlier, (he still found it hard to believe his computer crime worked), and second, because he feared he may have been tempting fate by linking three times in one clay. That fear of having another outburst was also what drove him to pay cash for his clothes rather than to use his overdrawn credit card. Had he done that, he would have had to link with the computer via telephone to raise the card's limit. Although he hadn't had any heart problems or shortness of breath since he left the hospital, Burt had had numerous fits of anger and blackouts which he was sure were directly related to his linking. The last thing he wanted was to have one of these attacks in front of Amanda, so he continued to stare at himself in the mirror to check for any signs of abnormality which might foretell of trouble to be. But as he studied his reflection, he could find no evidence of any changes in his color, no sweating, no rapid pulse. In fact he felt fine. His cheeks were still a healthy pink--not pallid as they had been before at the cafeteria before his first attack.

As he turned to find a chair, Burt saw Amanda coming toward him from across the room. She was dressed in a strapless, floor-length satin evening gown which was nearly skin tight. She had purposefully packed this dress out of anger for the way Pat had treated her and she had planned to get even with him by wearing it and doing the town in Los Angeles when she arrived but because she was so tired that first night, she didn't get that opportunity to wear it. She wore it tonight, not out of trying to get even with Pat, but because she knew it looked good on her, and she wanted to look good for Mr. Grayson, hoping her womanly charms would work to lure him to Washington if all else failed.