AIQ

Part 3

General Gabriel Garcia Gilbert was a man of remarkably strong values. He was an unremarkable looking man, but beneath this was a mind constantly processing everything around him with acute accuracy. Gilbert was the sort of person you wanted to stop talking to as soon as possible, the kind of man who you would much rather prefer to accept the ideas of than continue arguing the point, since no matter what, he’d beat you in the end.

And it was the night before the subjects arrived that Gilbert decided on engaging in a private conference call with Frasier.

Frasier was trying to rest. Bach, which always helped Frasier no matter what he was trying to do, played loudly in the background as he tossed and turned in his bed of stiff mattress, trying to shut off his brain, trying to make it so that he could concentrate on the nothingness of the night. But he couldn’t, as hard as he pushed himself to. He started to want a cigarette. He had wanted one ever since that woman, that Teresa, had put those gallons of ash on him after meeting with Eugene. In his cold sweats, he remembered his first cigarette. He remembered Mother.

Beep. Frasier jumped out of bed, his whole body covered in sweat. The beep came from the touch screen situated just above his bed, the screen that looked like a television but was not – a call which the screen told him was a series of numbers, which he knew was actually General Gilbert.

Frasier tapped the screen and the beeping stopped. The general’s figure was immediately displayed on the wall. “Hello, Karl. Take a seat.” His voice was not as gruff as you would imagine – it was in fact somewhat soft spoken and sincere. It was a rare voice that one does not usually find attached to the rock that a general must be. But there it was.

“Hello, general. What –” Frasier wiped a blanket of sweat from his forehead. “What appears to be the problem?”

“I’m sorry, Karl, I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”

“No, no, no sir. I’ve just been working – um, what is, why are you calling?”

“I’m calling because we need to talk about the ultimate fate of the AIQ, and how I feel about something that is going on with it.”

“What?”

“Well, for starters, I need to talk with you about the changes we asked you to make to the device. The ones involving the perception enhancers and mind to body awareness – sound familiar?”

“Yes.” Frasier knew all too well. Three years ago, while all three scientists were working their hardest to create the central programming for the AIQ, the general had asked them to add several lines of code promoting the ability to “target, analyze, and be clear thinking in a ‘combat’ scenario.” This task was apparently more daunting than the general believed, and it took them a full year to add this into an already densely packed program. The worst part was that now everyone knew that this was why the army had stuffed so much of the nation’s money into the project – sooner or later, the AIQ would start to be used by soldiers, and perhaps only by soldiers. After all, a cure for a rare brain disease was always lower on the totem pole compared to winning an international war. That’s why Eugene was so important. That’s why a kid who had ataxia was needed so much. Frasier wanted to prove his device could be used to cure disease and destruction, instead of cause it.

“Well, you see, there’s something I need added to the code. An increase in one’s depth perception.”

“An increase in… what do you mean, add to the code, if you wanted something added to the code, you should have asked before we finished making the chips – adding anything would have absolutely no affect to the things already done; we literally have them prepped and ready for installation.”