“No, Hillary was just leaving…”
Hillary turned to her, surprised, then catching up. “I’m going to de-tox my brain. Happy researching, you two. Thanks, Janice, for being a real friend. Bye, Bill.”
“Have you gone through these yet?” Bill said as he reached for a ream of questionnaires.
Janice stared at him with a mixture of wonder and caution. He couldn’t decide which, but it prompted him to ask, “What?”
“Nothing; it’s just that you are here.”
“Well, you know, you’ve got that whole location specific awareness thing down pretty well. I am here; you are there; we are both here. That about covers it.”
“How come you aren’t in Santa Clara?” she asked instantly making him the poster boy for irresponsible males everywhere.
“Do you know how I got to this school?”
“No, how?”
“Well it wasn’t on a subway driver’s income. I won a football scholarship. I could have gone to Notre Dame, but the science program here is the best of all the schools who wanted me.”
“Can we get back to the Santa Clara tar pits?”
“Those guys played a great game; they want to let off a little steam. Let ‘em. I’ve got work to do.”
“Oh, is that it? The work. But aren’t you their General? Shouldn’t you be with your men as they go into battle?”
“It’s Captain, and that’s only on the football field. Santa Clara is an extracurricular activity. Look, are you perturbed that I am here? Am I interrupting your plans for the evening?”
Just then, Janice noticed that when Bill grabbed the pile of papers, he had uncovered the book she bought that day. Suddenly feeling stupid, she wanted to hide that book from Bill’s eyes.
Bill took her temporary distraction to mean that she didn’t want to see him at that moment. “Well, I’ll go. I’ll take these back to my room and bring them back tomorrow.”
And he was off!
Janice sat stunned, as she had no idea what had just happened. She was so happy to see him. What had she done to make him angry? Why did he leave? She plopped herself in her chair and mindlessly thumbed the page edges of a new copy of The Football Widow’s Guide to Football.
Tonight was Hiccock’s attempt at Fettuccine Alfredo. With candles on his table and Geraldo on TV in the background, the former college sweethearts now sat in his “bachelor” apartment as a snapshot of what they used to be.
“This is really good,” Janice said after two mouthfuls.
“Yeah, it came out pretty good. Must be the cream cheese.”
His words stopped her cold, right in the middle of her fork twirl. She almost spit out her pasta. “Cream cheese?”
“Yeah, I went all-out and got the Philly instead of the no-frills stuff.”
“I watch a lot of those cooking shows on cable, but this sounds like a recipe from the Cartoon Channel.”
“You just said it was really good.”
“And you just told me you made it with cream cheese. Alfredo must be spinning in his grave!”
“Want more?”
“Definitely.”
Bill gave her another serving. “You know what I was just thinking about?”
“No, what?” she asked after swallowing a fork full of the Ronzoni Number 14 and cream cheese based culinary masterwork.
“When we first met.”
Janice smiled and her eyes met his the same way they had that night when he showed up in her office, “You mean our first fight?”
“No, I was wondering what ever happened to Brad?”
Janice’s mind recoiled. “Brad? What made you think of him out of the blue?”
“It wasn’t a fight. I thought you were meeting some other guy there and I was in the way.”
“You know, you didn’t know anything about women then and you don’t know anything about them now?”
“Where did that come from?”
“You were the smartest dumb jerk in the world. It took you a year to realize how crazy I was for you.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I came to you that night because I decided I had enough of the wildcatting and partying. I realized all I wanted was to see you.”
“Do you know I never went to a football game in all my years of high school and college because I was afraid I’d want more, want it bad! And I thought I could never get it. Maybe I wasn’t cool enough to have a guy like Brad, or you! But, I overcame that to see you play. No, that’s a lie; I came solely to see you. You know, I had to go out to dinner with the jerk who sold the tickets just to get close to mid-field so I could see you!”
“You never told me that!”
“It wasn’t important. We went Dutch actually; I didn’t want to owe that sleaze anything.”
“So, I guess we both sacrificed for each other,” Hiccock summed up the last few minutes and was ready to move on. Janice however, was still processing.
“Wait,” she retorted, “Are you taking the position that not going to a slut infested, mass groupie suck and fuck-fest with sexually transmitting diseased tramps was somehow a sacrifice? On second thought, don’t answer that! So, how was your day at the office, dear?”
The evening’s conversation continued, focused on his day at the office, that being the office of the president’s science advisor.
“So you think the FBI’s theory is wrong?”
“First off, they’d kill me if they knew I was discussing this with you. And, yes, when any part of an assumption doesn’t test true to the operational model of the proposition, it must be deemed false.”
“Well, that may be true in a purely scientific sense, but I know of cases where eleven-year-old boys have the intellect and adaptive skills to do great tasks.”
“Are you suggesting that I am not considering the human factor?”
“You pretty much live your whole life ignoring the human factor.” She smiled to take the point off the little dagger she just inserted, but Hiccock felt it all the same.
“Is this going to turn into the ‘soulless’ argument again?”
“Am I getting too predictable for you? Listen, artificial intelligence is half the package. Without a conscience or other mediated value structure, it has no more potential to be useful than a, a … serial killer.” She dug a little more pasta out of the serving bowl.
“AI can be the tool that helps man crack the biggest mysteries of life and the universe, unfettered by human bias. It can help us reach beyond the limits of three-dimensional thinking.”
“That’s what I am afraid of. Without all those messy, sloppy biases or without some moral or spiritual guidance package, it will never be intelligent, just belligerent.”
Hiccock was lost. Tyler seemed distracted by something on TV.
“Well, at least they can’t blame this one on hip-hop,” she said, still looking at the TV.
He looked over his shoulder to see what she was watching. Geraldo displayed a mug shot of Martha Krummel, the gardening grandmother who derailed the freight train.
“Grandma Martha didn’t hang with the homies around the beat box.”
“You know, having an ex with a Ph.D. in behavioral sciences might be an advantage after all. At least we’ll …” He stopped when he saw a video clip, taken with a telephoto lens, of himself as he had left the White House today.
“Once again, ladies and gentlemen,” Geraldo said, “I have a confirmed report from an inside White House source close to the president that this man — can we slow that tape down?” The video image on the screen strobed and flickered as it slowed down to catch Hiccock walking from the side door of the East Wing to a waiting car. Geraldo continued to speak over what in the business is called a “package,” a pre-produced piece featuring old footage and stills of Hiccock in his college days. “William Hiccock, the former Heisman Trophy — winning quarterback who abandoned what everyone agreed would have been a brilliant career in the pros to follow his love of science”—the picture switched to footage of Bill among a group of administration appointees—“has now been named as independent investigator of these same terrorist attacks. This despite the objections of the FBI and the Office of Homeland Security. It seems, ladies and gentlemen, as we sit here tonight, that a classic old-fashioned turf war is heating up within the administration.