Factoring Humanity

“Perhaps,” said Kyle. “Or perhaps the message made a pictogram that by coincidence meant something only to Huneker.” He jerked a thumb at the Dali painting. “You know, maybe he’d stolen money from his church poor box and the pictogram happened to look like Jesus on the cross, or some such thing. Drove him crazy.”

“In which case you’d be immune, you atheist you.”

Kyle shrugged.

“Maybe you should do it,” said Heather. She lowered her voice. “After all, if Becky…”

Kyle nodded. “If Becky sues me and I lose everything that the world knows I’ve got, it would be nice to have a lucrative source of income.”

Heather was quiet for a moment, then: “I have to get going.”

Kyle stood up. “Thanks for coming by,” he said.

Heather smiled wanly and left.

Kyle returned to his chair and sat thinking. Was there anything — anything at all — that someone could reveal to him that would cause him to kill himself?

No. No, of course not.

Except -

He shuddered.

Yes, there was one thing that someone could reveal that might indeed cause him to take his own life, just as poor Josh Huneker had done all those years ago up in the middle of nowhere.

Proof that it was he, not Becky, who had false memories of what had really happened during her childhood.

16

Heather returned to Paul Komensky’s lab late the next afternoon. The little robot was still chugging along, but it had consumed most of the third and final substrate sheet. “It should be just a few more minutes,” Paul said, coming over to greet her.

Heather thought of something she’d once heard about never trusting engineers’ time estimates. “Okay.”

As if feeling a need to demonstrate that he wasn’t that far off, Paul gestured at two large boxes, which were indeed mostly full of little rectangular pieces of painted substrate.

Heather went over to the boxes and picked up the first two tiles. She snapped them together; they held nicely.

The robot made an electronic chirping sound. Heather turned around. She was blocking its path. She got out of its way, and it rolled over to the second box, dropped in a tile, then made a different series of bleeps and stopped.

“Done,” said Paul.

Heather lifted one of the boxes. It must have weighed over twenty kilos.

“You’ll need help getting that back to your office,” said Paul.

She certainly would have appreciated a hand, but she’d imposed enough. Or, she thought more honestly, she’d incurred all the obligation she wanted to. She’d enjoyed Paul’s company yesterday, but it had felt wrong afterward — and now it was almost dinnertime; she knew things would not end with him simply helping her across campus.

“No, I’ll be fine,” she said.

Heather thought Paul looked disappointed, but he was no doubt able to read the signs; you didn’t survive in a university environment if you couldn’t, that guy in Anthropology — Bentley, Bailey, whatever his name was — notwithstanding.

But then Heather turned back to the two boxes; she’d kill herself trying to get them over to Sid Smith in this heat. Really, she could use some assistance.

“On the other hand…” she said.

Paul brightened.

“Sure,” said Heather. “Sure, I’d be very grateful for some help.”

Paul held up a single finger, indicating he’d be back in one minute. He left the lab and returned shortly, pushing two hand trucks in front of him, one with each hand. It was a bit awkward; they seemed to want to go in separate directions. Heather came over to him. Their hands touched briefly as she took the handles of one of the units.

“Thanks,” she said.

Paul smiled. “My pleasure.” He wheeled his hand truck in front of him, pushed its lip under one of the boxes, then tilted the whole unit back so that the box rested against the red metal frame. Heather duplicated the procedure with her hand truck and the second box.

Paul held his finger up again. “You’ll need a supply of clamps and clips if you want to make the squares into cubes.” He got a third box — he’d already had it prepared, it seemed — and set it on top of the one on his hand truck.

“There are also a couple of glass handles in there.” He opened the box and removed one. It was a suction-cup affair with a black handle on it. “You seen these before? They’re used for handling panes of glass, but you might find them useful for maneuvering your big sheets once you assemble them.”

“Thanks,” Heather said again.

“Of course you know that a real tesseract has only twenty-four faces.”

“What?” said Heather. She couldn’t have screwed up in such a fundamental way. “But Kyle said — ”

“Oh, when it’s unfolded, it appears to have forty-eight faces, but when it folds up, each of the faces touches another face, leaving only twenty-four. The one on the bottom folds over to touch the one on the top, the side cubes fold in, and so on. Not that there’s any way to really fold it, of course.” He paused. “Shall we get going?”

Heather nodded, and they set off, rolling the hand trucks in front of them.

Of course, once they got back to her office, she could just thank him and let him go, but -