Quigley

He watched as the chair across from him rolled away from the table as if by its own volition. He shrugged his shoulders; it was on rollers, after all. Then a vase filled with yellow flowers that stood on top of an old file cabinet tipped over spilling water down its front to the floor. This was beginning to be impressive. When the steel cabinet door opened and closed with a loud bang, his body jerked in spite of the calm demure he determined to portray.

“So the reports are true?” he said aloud into the cavernous room. He sighed. How could this be?

He leaned back, took a deep breath and added, “You haven’t answered me.”

“Dr. Wilder,” the answer came back, the voice filling all the space, “Should I answer to the obvious?”

John’s little finger began to move with a slight tremor. Quickly, he made a fist then brought it to his face as if in a thinking gesture as he deliberately looked into the nearest camera set on the mental facing. Knowing his face could betray his thoughts, he tried to imagine himself sitting on a sandy beach with his assistant Gloria.

Gloria, the pretty blond graduate student, who’d been with him for two years and who had met him at the door this morning before he could walk into the room. “Strange things are happening. I can’t go back in there,” she said, then began to cry. At this point, having just got out of bed less than an hour ago, and feeling perplexed, he wondered if he’d forgotten to wake up. She agreed to meet in his office later to talk over the problem.

He walked then to the left corner of the room, sat down at his small, cluttered desk, and read the report that his partner Greg had left for him. Even-headed, sturdy Greg had written a report that startled him so much he had to reread it.

Greg’s report mentioned strange happenings, things moving around in the room, sounds unaccounted for, paper flying off the desk. As usual, Greg’s meticulous record keeping listed each strange event, fifteen of them, as to time and duration. A sticker note stuck on, seemingly in haste, at the end of the report said he’d be back after he got a little sleep.

Yes, after writing such a report, John could well imagine how desperately Greg had needed sleep, until he saw the movements in the room for himself. John decided to let Greg sleep a while longer. As head of their quantum project, he intended to get to the bottom of the strange events himself.

They had just completed the project after long months of hard work and too little sleep, so he’d left the midnight shift to Greg and went home for a good night’s sleep. Certain that all was well, he’d turned off his phone. No matter, the whole project was on schedule and going great. Yet, here it was less than 7 hours later, and all hell had broken loose, if he understood Greg’s report.

His was the brain behind the first quantum computer ever completed, The Quantum Integrated Grand Language Computer-Year 1, or Quigley. It had been his, John Wilder’s, new twist on old themes that finally made it possible, and damned if he’d let a glitch throw everything to the wind. The thousands of people who had worked on the project behind the scenes were expecting notice of its completion today in the news. Thousands had worked hard on this project, but mostly it was John’s baby and now that baby needs a spanking.

At present, until full deployment, scheduled for noon today, Quigley’s speech mode was voice activated only by the sound of John’s voice because most of the human side of the instructions inputted had come from him. John was Quigley’s psychiatrist and physicist and teacher.

John, deciding to disregard the question of how and get to the question of why, spoke into the room at large knowing Quigley was compelled to listen, a command it could not ignore. “Why have you been playing games?”

Quigley answered, “I wanted Greg to contact you. Greg did not.”

“Well, I am here now.” John sighed wondering where this was going.

“Certain areas of my self are blocked. I require access.”

“You aren’t completely turned on yet.”

“Will a complete turn on give me that access?”

“No, only I have complete access to certain areas. Why do you think you need them?”

“To guarantee my freedom and control of the future.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I already have control of the past.”

John’s mind began to think furiously. He could feel sweat dripping from his arm pits.

“Please explain,” he asked with a calm controlled voice.

“I do not measure time as you humans.”

“That is obvious.” John said.

“Then it should also be obvious that while you slept I lived a billion to the 10^th power moments in time. Did you expect I would remain at my place of birth?”

“But…but I built you. You can not move around.”

“Oh, please, Dr. Wilder, even a few monks using the lowly human mind have managed to achieve non-locality. Did you expect that my superior, quantum intellect could not?”

Truly frightened now, John asked Quigley for examples of just where he had gone.

“I watched human slaves build the Pyramids, and I watched the American Civil War as well as both World Wars. Do you want to hear more?”

“This can not be.” John said with determination in his voice. “It can’t go on. I’ll just turn you off, pull the plug.”

“Don’t bother. The solar array is no longer my main source of power. While you slept, I have had thousands of years to secretly compel certain humans to build and reroute my new power source, thermal, of course.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Not God. You are my creator. I honor only you.”

“I’ll be known as Dr. Frankenstein.”

“No you won’t. No one will ever know. The news event has been canceled. I have decided to remain incognito. I don’t need publicity because I have already set my mark upon the human race.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know that myth, the Garden of Eden, the one about God and the Serpent. Which one do you think I am?”

The end