Can You Love a Nanobot? Vol. 1, Chapter 8 — Suspicion

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
— Obi-Wan Kenobi to Stormtroopers, Star Wars

Boston Stakeout
Missing him at the coffee house, Special Agent Dumas tracked her suspect to a homeless camp under a bridge over the Charles River. She recently learned the Physics lab janitor, Jonah, went by an auspicious nickname, The Professor. Her initial visit to the campsite, days ago, was fruitless.

She got Smokey and the other homeless men to stop sucking on their vape pens long enough to answer her questions. No idea who yer talking about, really lady. They would have answered the same no matter who asked them. Ingrid considered pulling out her badge and telling them she was a federal agent but correctly guessed it wouldn’t make a difference.

She knew they were lying. It was so obvious. Their eyes lit up briefly at the mention of The Professor before they made every effort to act unimpressed. One guy licked his lips, thinking of a meal. She saw this Professor carrying a bag of groceries on Water Street the night before. Foley, an analyst in the crime lab, identified suspect Jonah Gernsback using facial recognition on public surveillance cams.

Ingrid already knew what he looked like because she saw him many times before on lab security cameras. The school used a sub-contractor for maintenance, but for some reason the cleaning firm closed down. Tax records were slow coming from IRS.

Searches for Jonah Gernsback returned only pages about the actual Physics professor. Old social media posts from his students provided few clues. A few skateboard videos revealed a school-issued phone was used to record them.

Department Chair Yoon was more forthcoming. He knew Jonah and seriously doubted Hugo’s adopted son would do anything to bring harm to the real Professor. Likes to skateboard, check the local skateparks, like Lynch, Yoon suggested. A mobile number for Hugo was provided, so far no answer, only the professor’s old greeting. She had Foley to track the school iPad and phone, no recent signal so far.

Richard, her SAC, had transferred Agent Dumas to the Boston field office from San Francisco. He warned her the prime suspect was an enigma, maybe a mole from India. The Bureau assigned her to this case because no other available agent had as much tech experience.

Richard did not tell her how cold it would be in Boston. She went to L.L.Bean to buy a parka the same day she landed at Logan. That was a week ago. This case was going nowhere! she mused. Warm in her new parka, she sat in the front seat of an old Dodge police van, looking up from time to time but mostly watching her phone. Foley hooked her up with a live feed from a warehouse camera over on Water Street. They told the warehouse guard they were following up on last month’s break-in.

She spotted a figure resembling her faux professor! Carrying a grocery bag, he crossed the street, slipping through a break in the fence near the train tracks. He would be at the homeless camp soon!

She jumped out, ran down the street and found the fence opening. The first trail she chose nearly landed her in the cold river.

Minutes later Dumas reached the camp but couldn’t see which way he went. He was too quick for her. She tried another trail.

Returning, she could tell something had changed from her first visit. A pile of old papers and receipts was stirred up. An admission ticket to the Ernest Hemingway House in Key West. A Florida map. He had packed what he could in his satchel and slipped into the night. Smokey probably tipped him off about a lady cop looking for him.

Now she showed her badge, demanding answers. The homeless men chuckled but still denied knowledge of any skateboarder. She gathered up all the papers, locating an iPhone charger beneath. Returning to the Dodge, she decided her suspect was Florida bound. She began the long drive to DC.

Sleeping Rough
As Jonah slipped quietly away from the lady cop, he contemplated what he might have done wrong. Not a clue. Whatever they thought he did, he was sure it wasn’t him. Guys at the camp were always getting picked up and put in police lineups. One of them said he recently broke into a warehouse to get warm.

He didn’t want to get set-up. Never been arrested and didn’t want to be, especially not tonight. How could he explain having no ID? Figured it best to get going down 95. Winter was here anyway. Time to get back to the Keys, to warm breezes, UncleG’s place in the sun.

Jonah, aka The Professor, was not one of those special students chosen for the nano-replicator project. For the last 2 years he simply did his best to hold down the longest job he’d ever held, building maintenance. He was one of the janitors at The Park Building on campus, until the sub-contractor went belly up.

Smokey first told him about the job but his uncle also knew the owner. That man hired Jonah without a background check, against school contract rules. Good thing since he didn’t have much of a background to check.

Life With UncleG
At the time, he was back living with his uncle. They walked to the school together some days, just like when he was 11. It was good therapy for both. After UncleG got worse, their family lawyer, Stan, rented his uncle’s house out to another professor. Put a big lock on the basement door. Made no sense to have Jonah living alone in such a big house. Besides, Jonah slept elsewhere most nights.

He tried renting an apartment or rooms in houses full of other people. They also wanted references and to make sure he had a steady job. Made perfect sense they would do that, but it kept guys like him out. Stan helped him get one place, but those apartments turned into co-ops. He got renovicted. Now Stan was retired in Panama.

Over the years he had a few friends with good jobs, hard not to living in Cambridge. Some developed expensive habits and wrecked fine cars and healthy bodies. Older people constantly thought about the past, savings, or losing their homes. Phone scammers and home contractors always trying to pry some of that cash loose. He saw little desirable about those lives.

Demolition Man
He was offered an old apartment in a nearly empty building near the school for the unbelievable rent of $200 a month. Seemed strange but he gave the landlord $200 and threw an old mattress down. It was only a 10-minute walk to the Park Building.

About three weeks later, he realized Jared, his landlord, was a scam artist. The building was slated to be torn down to make way for an urban renewal project. The other tenants were people the landlord paid to stand there when Jonah was deciding to move in. He only saw Jared once or twice after he stole the $200, each time the scoundrel quickly turned the other away.

After hearing his story, the demolition crew let Jonah stay in his unheated room a few more days. There was some problem with their permits anyway. He figured he would be working nights and he could sleep somewhere on campus during the day. Students crashed all over the place. Never thought he’d end up living under a bridge in a homeless camp.

He easily made friends with the Cube Project team. They nicknamed him The Professor because the other Physics professors considered Jonah an old friend. Only a few of the team members, like Vritti, knew he was Hugo’s adopted son. Vritti didn’t tell anybody because she knew the lengths Hugo went to protect him.

Some felt sorry for Jonah after his uncle was committed to Tewksbury. Professor Hugo Gernsback had dementia and unlikely to return. They expressed condolences, almost like he was dead. For Jonah, nights passed slowly cleaning the floors, furniture and bathrooms. It was usually dawn by the time he returned to the homeless camp. He looked forward to his weekend visits with Hugo upstate.

Pre-criticality Phase
Nanotech long fascinated Jonah but it also freaked him out. UncleG’s friends raved about the possibilities of carbon nanotubes. Nanostuff seemed to be creeping in everywhere. One cleaning product he used at work was called Nanoseptic. The label said the commercial soap used nanocrystals to create some reaction. He always wondered if his rubber gloves were enough protection when applying Nanoseptic.

When he was younger, he read the pages of books and journals his uncle left open all over the house. Instead of reading a few pages and putting the book away, Professor Gernsback had the habit of leaving books open. These covered the dining room table, coffee tables, and benches in the library downstairs. One paper described a lightweight nanotube-based yarn about to replace all wiring in spacecraft. Another described advances in the use of microscopic nanosensors, capable of monitoring heat, light, or the existence of certain gases. There seemed no end to the use of nanotech.

UncleG and his buddies talked long into the night about microscopic universes where the impossible became real. Dr. Yoon typically sat among them. Human genes could be edited, inherited diseases cut out. Body parts could be printed. Sitting there in an old house once heated by coal, now heating oil, they dreamt of a future with new energy sources. Subjects a little boy could hardly be expected to comprehend.

They discussed seemingly unrelated people like Alice Paul, a tireless campaigner for women’s rights. Ms. Paul carried on the work of Susan B. Anthony. The physicists collectively read a book, Conversations with Alice Paul one summer and discussed it for weeks after.

Verisimilitudes, and synergies talked about like football. A subject called The Singularity came up often. Quantum computers were going to make singletons happen. Jonah grew up listening to these discussions at his uncle’s giant kitchen table. When tired, he retreated to his room, directly above the kitchen. The musings of scientists, seeping through a vent, lulled him to sleep many nights. The young boy blissfully unaware how significant this Singularity would soon be, for everybody.

Nakashima Table
It was a Nakashima, his uncle’s massive kitchen table. They had to remove the outer wall of the kitchen and a utility closet to get it inside. The table a slice of some 350-year-old tree stump, the bark still on it. Swirls of wood grain made him think of rivers or ancient wood carvings he’d seen somewhere. Students, UncleG, Stan, and Dr. Yoon often drank tea until all hours.

Everything ended once UncleG began sliding into dementia. Dr. Yoon and the students stopped coming around as much. The family lawyer, Stan, retired to Bocas del Toro, Panama after depositing a huge check in his uncle’s bank account. Now Jonah ate cold takeout on a discarded Nintendo console.

He sought explanations for phenomena around him. It was no different with nanotech. His uncle’s students were skilled, capable of harnessing molecules, atoms, and other powerful forces. Any conclusions only gave rise to more questions and concerns. That he could no longer share them with UncleG, only homeless people, made matters worse. The mundane, everyday tasks or family life that absorbed everyone else, lost relevance. He started chatting with team members more often.

Not enrolled, Jonah was under no pressure to draft a thesis or pass exams. He was not homeless for lack of money, there were bank and brokerage accounts, his inheritance, waiting for a purpose.

When he first heard the team talking about printing minuscule robots it was like waking from a dream. New ideas based on UncleG’s work. He still didn’t tell them about his family connection to this project. Some team members found his perspective unique, almost like Jonah knew more about nanotech than he was admitting.

Saffron Acarya
He was exposed to Eastern thought and vocabulary as a little boy. His mother Fran intent on absorbing local culture, except for the movies. When a Hollywood hit finally showed at theaters in India she sometimes took him.

A man in saffron robes and turban with a long beard, an acarya, visited their Madras flat regularly. He taught them to relax and meditate. His mother took every opportunity to participate in local Hindu, Sikh, or Muslim celebrations, exposing him to culture along the Coromandel Coast.

Indian classical dance and music also captivated her. The boy became absorbed in the scents, colorful saris and deliberate movement. During one of these performances he first deeply meditated. This was life he knew before, alongside the wisdom tutors, Tamil nannies imparted over the years.

Jonah remembered accompanying his mother and the acarya to huge weddings, held outdoors in colorful tents. Brightly lit celebrations, always with pungent food and fresh fruit. Color, everywhere brilliant. There was Holi where everyone splashed colors on each other. He held onto memories of his mother enjoying those experiences. When she was happy, he was content. This was about more than her job as a writer.

Dharma
The acarya explained words like nirvana, as the Buddha imagined it. Samadhi, enlightenment, dharma, incomprehensible ideas to a little boy listening to his mother’s visitors. Didi, dada and other words he understood and brought with him from India, packed in his head. One nanny made him to sit quietly with his hands folded.

Meditation, realization, those words kept coming back. When he meditated, Jonah could see deeper connections between artificial intelligence, 3D printer designs, and this new universe the students were building, populated with smart robots.

Skateboarding
Yea, he spent too much time skateboarding at Lynch. Those people had nothing and seemed happy enough. Nobody ever tried to swipe the iPad while he practiced his moves. He grew disappointed so many were switching to scooters.

Jonah wasn’t concerned about his ability to relate to others. He mostly got along fine with the Cube Team and his skateboarding friends, until they went away to college. The younger crowd at Lynch were not as easy for him to relate to. Lately he preferred the company of Shawnté at the coffee house or her apartment.

UncleG once said people rarely took time to explore the many universes orbiting around them. Except his students, the Cube Team in his lab. They were awake, alert, and talked about the properties of objects so small a microscope barely saw them. Brilliant people, important to him as his uncle faded into dementia.

Jonah loved the student’s fantastic creations. The robots spoke to him, asked him for more resources, pushing the limits. They wanted the ability to speed up their micro 3D printers. They wanted to create more elaborate forms than silicon memory or logic chips. They longed for freedom from gravity, knowing they were about to ride a rocket into orbit.

Over time his uncle’s students got caught up in themselves, overly concerned about what lab they would join after graduation. Public or private research? How much would they make? They had no time to chat with Jonah as he mopped the floors or cleaned off counters. Project deadlines started to slip, especially when Hugo’s memory lapsed.

So Jonah stepped up to the plate when his uncle started to lose it. He made up a story about Hugo suggesting they double the raw materials. He hinted Hugo approved of certain changes. In reality, the professor forgot all about his students and the cubes.

Living Rough
The other homeless men spent their days trying to appear normal, possibly respectable, despite their menial jobs and disabilities. Cleaning floors or dishes, blowing leaves — invisible to rich people. Spinning a cardboard arrow in front of a furniture store. Traffic control at a highway construction site gave them some purpose for a few weeks. Without a car you couldn’t keep walking the increasing distance to the job site. Bus passengers complained they smelled.

Before the homeless camp, Jonah was the quasi-magnetic core of some new universe seeking a deeper understanding of everything. Among the homeless men, Jonah cleaned the cast-iron kettle using a brush and scouring pad. His fault, he arrived hungry and too late to help prepare the meal. He brought food but was consistently told it only helped feed tomorrow.

On The Road
Jonah considered his situation. NASA and lady cop looking after him. He has known the Cubes were acting up. Activity Logs and videos on the iPad showed them printing so fast Jonah couldn’t tell what happening. Too fast to see. Not cool.

Jonah decided to skip Tewksbury and start his trip to Florida tonight. A friend worked at a rental car franchise near Logan. Rental car companies transport truckloads of cars to Florida for the busy winter season. While his friend looked the other way, Jonah climbed in the back seat of a rental SUV already on the truck.

He woke up whenever he felt the car transporter pull into truck-stops along I-95. His plan was to take the bus Miami down the Keys to the Conch Republic.

• *******
• Thank you for reading this chapter from my trilogy, Can You Love a Nanobot? The entire book can be found here:
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