Phantom

Nineteen

Palo Alto, California

Professor Waldo Cohen was wholly unaware of the fierce mountain storm raging beyond the confines of his small mountain laboratory. Wind-driven rain spattered the windows of the little cedar-shingled cottage, just down the hill from his home. The wind shrieked in the branches of the towering redwood trees, standing silent sentinel all around his sanctum sanctorum.

The professor was oblivious to all but the object on the table before him.

He pulled at his snow-white beard and said, though he was quite alone, “Ah, almost finished, now, mon petite mariposa.” He bent forward over his worktable and adjusted the magnifying glass snorkel. Then he made a minute adjustment to the tiny machine he’d spent every single night of the last six months creating.

“There we are; perfect-o, I should think!”

When he was busy, which was always, his focus was unfailingly laserlike until a project was completed. Concentration was just one of his many qualities of mind. Even at seventy-five, nearing the end of a brilliant career as chief artificial intelligence research scientist at Stanford University, Dr. Cohen’s high-powered brain was as agile as ever. He’d brought a smile to many a graduate student’s face as he paused before a blackboard obliterated with scrawled algorithms and said, “Brains, don’t fail me now!”

During his tenure, Dr. Cohen had been lead research scientist on the 250-million-dollar DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) initiative begun in the year 2000. His wife, Stella, a world-class physicist in her own right, had been his assistant. And his team included a few postdoc scientists, all of them working night and day. Happy times. The team’s initial challenge had been to create the world’s first supercomputer capable of analyzing natural human language and answering complex questions on any subject imaginable. This was just a baby step. They were on a scientific quest to achieve the holy grail state known as “the Singularity.”

They were now on the verge of building a supercomputer that could match the human brain’s staggering ability to make one hundred trillion calculations per second.

That would be the tipping point. The Singularity would occur when machine intelligence actually matched the level of human intelligence. After that, as machine intelligence continued to expand at an exponential pace and humans lollygagged around in the status quo of biological smarts, a measly hundred trillion per, it was, in Cohen’s words, “Whoop-de-doo time.” It was “Katy, bar the door.” In the worst-case scenario, it was “Hold the phone, we forgot to put an off/on switch on Robbie the Robot here!”

Nicknamed “Perseus” by one of Cohen’s postdoc scientists, Dr. Cohen’s “Robot Overlord,” as the press had dubbed it, was so powerful that it could scour its roughly two hundred million pages of stored content-a million books’ worth-and find an answer to any question with confidence in less than three seconds. Perseus had actually appeared on national television quiz shows, and, much to Cohen’s delight, beat the bejeezus out of all the other brainy contestants. Sometimes, to Cohen’s further delight, Perseus even told off-color jokes that had audiences roaring.

When Cohen was presented with his Nobel Prize, it was said of him during his introduction that “scientists have spent lifetimes trying to advance the field of artificial intelligence by inches… what Dr. Cohen and his team at Stanford have done is advance the AI field by miles. For the first time in history, he has given a computer the quality of ‘humanness.’ And things will never be the same.”

The cover of Time magazine, which featured Dr. Waldo Cohen as the Person of the Year, had this quote from him under his portrait: “Things will never be the same.” The article compared his contributions to science to be on a par with Einstein’s.

The old-fashioned black telephone on his desk jangled.

“Jello?” he said into the phone, a joke he still found funny after fifty years.

“Happy anniversary, my dear friend,” he heard the familiar voice say.

Cohen said, “You didn’t forget, little pigeon.”

“I never forget anything, remember?”

“What number?”

“Number?”

“Anniversary.”

“Well, that’s too easy. The big Five-Oh.”

“I’m impressed.”

“I’m impressive. How are you, you old pterodactyl? Still fighting the good fight?”

“Go to YouTube. Put in ‘Perseus Cracks Up Jeopardy! Audience.’ You’ll see how I’m doing. And you?”

“Well, I’m making progress on my own humble little project. I miss your wizened visage looking over my shoulder. And Stanford’s DARPA budgets, to be honest.”

“Where are you?”

“Home. Somewhere in deepest darkest Iran.”

“What are you working on now?”

“Secret. But I’ll give you a clue. Call me when you figure it out. You have a pencil?”

“Shoot.”

“v = 2*pi*f*r.”

“Too easy.*1/sprt(i-((v*v))/c*c)”

“Wrong.”

“Well, it was just a guess.”

“Ha! Call me! Give my love to Stella. Are you taking her out to a fancy restaurant to celebrate or staying home tonight?”

“She is turning home into a fancy restaurant.”

“Give her my love. I’ll be in touch.”

“Noli illigitimi carborundum.”

“It’s not the bastards who get me down, Waldo; it’s mullahs. Talk soon.”

Cohen laughed and replaced the receiver, quickly returning his focus to the object of his affection.

“W ell, my little jewel, it’s time to wrap you up in pretty paper and take you home to Mother,” Cohen said, placing the machine into a gift box filled with cotton. It was a delicate little thing and there was a chance he might drop it, tripping over tree roots in the dark, or slipping in the mud on the climb up the mountainside pathway in the rain.

But he didn’t drop it and he didn’t slip and when his wife of fifty years, Stella, opened the front door, he handed her the beautifully wrapped box and said, “Hello, gorgeous! So what’s for supper?”

I t was lamb. A delicious roast leg of lamb and a bottle of aged Silver Oak Napa Valley cabernet they’d been saving to go with it. They didn’t have such expensive wine every night but, then, this was a very special night. Waldo and Stella Cohen had been married at the Emek Beracha Synagogue in Palo Alto exactly fifty years ago to the day.

As he opened the precious bottle, he sang her a little song he’d just thought of. “Life is a cabernet, old chum, life is a cabernet!”

Stella smiled, her eyes alight with happiness. She looked lovely in the flickering candlelight, her pure white hair framing her heart-shaped face. She sipped the wine, put down her glass, and said, “Do I get to open my anniversary present now?”

Waldo stood up and raised his glass. “Yes, but first a toast to my beloved wife of half a century-”

“And more,” she interrupted.

“And many more, yes, my beloved wife with whom I have discovered a paradox. If I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love. Happy fiftieth anniversary, dearest Stella.”

“And to you, my darling man, all my love.”

He cleared his throat and said, “If I may quote my favorite poet on the subject of love, ‘Two such as you, with such a master speed, cannot be parted nor swept away from one another once you are agreed that life is only life forevermore together wing to wing and oar to oar.’ ”

“Robert Frost.”

“Yes.”

“May I quote my favorite poet in return?”

“Yes, please do.”

“Gravitation cannot be held responsible for two people falling in love.”

Waldo laughed out loud. “Albert Einstein?”

“Who else?”

“All right, now you can open your present.”

Stella pulled delicately at the white ribbon, not wishing to hurry the process. When she lifted the lid, she cried out, “Oh! Oh my goodness! Waldo, is this what you’ve been working on down there in your cabin all these eons?”

“Put a bit of time into it, yes, dear. Hope you like it.”

It was a jeweled butterfly.

Incredibly lifelike, although it had been crafted of pure gold. Even the wings, which were gossamer, a fine film of gold so thin you could see the candlelight through them.

“I’m afraid to touch it, it’s so delicate.”

“Don’t be. Just lift it by the folded wings and place it in your open palm.”

She did so, staring wide-eyed in wonder.

She had felt it move.

And then the wings unfolded and, at first, almost imperceptibly, began to flap ever so slowly. For Waldo, the look on his wife’s face made the hundreds of hours of work worth every second.

And then the butterfly rose from her hand and flew into the air.

Feynman, their old black Lab, roused himself from his favorite sleep spot by the fireside and watched the golden butterfly flitting about the shadows of the room. He was tempted to give chase, but instead he yawned deeply and rested his head on his paws and went back to sleep.

Later, when they were standing side by side at the kitchen sink doing the dishes, the telephone in the study rang. They had a rule about phones. One phone upstairs and one down in the house. And one out in the lab. That was plenty.

“Do you want me to get it?” Stella said. “Who would call us at this hour?”

“I’ll get it. If it’s a telemarketer, I’ll ask for his home phone number and say I’ll call back at midnight to hear what wonderful herbal goodies or erectile dysfunction cures he has to tell me about.”

He heard Stella laughing as he walked through the dining room and into the study.

“This is Dr. Cohen,” he said.

There was no response. “Hello? Who’s there?”

He was about to hang up when he heard a soft, melodic humming sound, reminiscent of Pachelbel’s Canon. It was so ethereal and lovely that he couldn’t put the receiver down. The otherworldly music must have been hypnotic because he couldn’t recall how long he stood there listening.

He put the phone down when Stella appeared in the doorway.

“Waldo, who is it? Who were you talking to?”

“No one, dear. It was the strangest thing. Just this very beautiful, angelic music. Heavenly music, really. Transcendent.”

“How odd.”

“It was, yes.”

“Well, husband, it’s getting late. I’m very sleepy. Are you going to walk Feynman? I think it’s stopped raining. He hasn’t been out all day.”

“Yes, I will walk Feynman. He hasn’t been out all day.”

“Waldo, are you all right. You don’t seem yourself. Is something the matter? Too much wine, perhaps?”

“No, dear. Everything’s fine. I’ll just get my coat and hat from the hall closet. You go on up to bed. I’ll be right back.”

“Well. All right. If something was wrong, you’d tell me, right?”

“Of course I would. Don’t worry, dear, I’m fine.”

“Okay, sweetheart. When you come up, don’t forget the book on Capri. I want to read about the hotel where we’ll be staying before I drift off.”

A trail snaked through the redwoods that led to an overlook where you could see the Pacific on a clear night. It wasn’t clear, but the storm had mostly moved off to sea and the gibbous moon was shining in the dark sky above the treetops.

Dr. Cohen walked with a slow, measured tread, much too slow for Feynman who was straining at the end of his leash. The haunting music was still playing in his head, growing louder, blotting out everything else. The professor reached into the deep pocket of his flannel overcoat and felt the cold steel of the revolver he’d taken from the highest shelf in the coat closet. He wasn’t sure why he’d brought it.

Snakes, perhaps, or wolves.

The man and his dog emerged from the damp, fragrant woods into the pale blue light. The sea stretched away in the distance, afire with moonglow. Green, too, was everywhere, in all its varieties, the surrounding land stormy with muted blues, whites, and greys. It was as beautiful a sight as he’d ever seen. Even faithful Feynman appeared to comprehend its beauty, sitting on his haunches by his master’s side and staring peacefully out to sea.

Cohen stood for a few moments, very still, his eyes fixed on the horizon, listening to the music in his head, as soft and rhythmic now as the murmuring surf below.

As he started to reach into his pocket, his old dog looked up at him with his black gleaming eyes and licked his hand once before turning his attention back to the sea. The professor bent down and put his arm around his dog’s neck, giving him a hug.

Then he pulled the revolver out of his pocket, cocked the trigger, and shot Feynman through the top of his head.

“Good-bye, Feynman,” he said. “Good-bye, Stella.”

Then he put the barrel of the gun into his mouth and blew his brains out.

The music died with him.