Chapter 8: Interlude

The Old Man was fuming as he waited for the human to trudge his way down the hall to his office. “Miss Dixon, what the hell is taking him so long?”

“Scientist Elbert has entered elevator three, with remaining travel estimated at forty seconds.”

The Old Man got up and paced the room. “Why do I even keep humans in this place,” he asked himself. “I wonder if a robot could do the work of…” he hesitated in his thoughts. “It would never work. They just don’t have it in them. No creativity. No intuition. I wonder if we could create…”

“Scientist Elbert to see you sir,” Miss Dixon called over the vid-com.

“Alright. Send him in.”

Elbert shuffled into the room, barely taking his feet off the floor. He was about to get called on the carpet for the previous night’s indiscretion and he knew it. His stomach was churning, his confidence was at low tide, and everything about him gave it away. He could not even bring himself to look at the Old Man, and instead kept his eyes focused on the floor.

“Well you finally decided to bless me with your presence, Dixon. I’m honored.” The Old Man turned his back to Elbert and walked to his desk, remaining on his feet. Elbert, due to the lack of furniture, remained standing as well, fidgeting, waiting for his worst fears to be confirmed.

“Sir.”

“Dixon,” the Old Man rounded in, “I have a report here that you made contact last night with a former, and disgraced might I add, member of this institution.” He walked over to his desk, picked up a piece of paper, and turned to face Elbert. Leaning on the edge of his desk he said, “Which was of course within your rights, limited though they may be.”

Elbert continued to look at his shoes. He caught himself fidgeting with his hands, and put them in his pockets. Unfortunately, he appeared to be the subject of his own conservation of energy law, and the fidgeting just moved to his feet.

“What was not within your rights, however, was the use of company documents during such a transmission. In fact, all such documents are proprietary, and sharing them in any way is a violation of our ethics contract.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t yessir me, Dixon.”

“Yes, sir. I mean no, sir.”

“Dixon, what the hell were you doing on the vid with that outlaw and why were you sharing our logs with him?”

Elbert, hands in pockets, eyes downcast, feet shuffling, muttered, “I…um…there must be some mistake…I…uh…I mean…I was just…”

“Out with it, Dixon.”

“What I mean to say is…we were…uh…just, you know…catching up on old times.”

Humans. Never the truth when a lie will do. At least this one was no good at it. It was almost endearing, this nervous wreck of a scientist who was so unsure of himself he could barely tell a lie to save his life. The confession would come soon enough, as long as he laid it on thick.

“Catching up on old times? Sure. Makes sense. What’s it been, about 12 years? You must have had a lot to talk about. Maybe talk about the old days, how nice things were here before he tried to sabotage our institution and tear us apart from the inside? Was that what you were talking about, Dixon?”

“I…sir…it wasn’t exactly…”

The Old Man pushed himself up from leaning on the desk, and walked around to his chair, where he sat down, and leaned back. It was time for a little “good cop” to bring him around. Guys like this could get broken if you pushed them too hard, which was all well and good if you could afford to break them. But he needed some information first, and a little confidence might just bring him around long enough to get it. “Ok, Dixon, this is how I see it. When that son-of-a-bitch tried to take us down, you got the opportunity of a lifetime. Maybe you got a job you weren’t up for, and could never have earned on your own. Maybe the only reason you did was because you didn’t have the guts to go down with him, and maybe you regret it. Maybe it was the pedant in you that let you justify bringing him down on a technicality, and ever since, you’ve been questioning whether you were really right or not.”

Elbert looked around uncomfortably for a chair. Finding his search futile, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“Then, yesterday, when I pointed out the anomalies in this log, you started asking yourself the hard questions, and you said to yourself, ‘what if I was wrong and he was right?’ You took the log home and stared at it all night over a bottle of S.I. Gin. When you got enough Dutch courage in you, you used your security clearance to call him on the vid and tell him what you saw. I’m not stupid, Dixon, and I’m not a fool. I know the look of a man with second thoughts, and he looks like you. Ok. I’m not thrilled about it but ok.”

According to plan, Elbert started to gain a small amount of confidence that this might not turn out as badly as he thought. He was, of course, deeply mistaken.

“But Dixon,” the Old Man continued, his voice soft but serious, “you crossed the line when you held up that log to the vid for the whole world to see on a public line. A public line, for chrissake.”

Elbert started to squirm all over again, with his eyes practically glued to his feet.

“Now let’s cut the crap, Dixon, so we can stop wasting my time. What the hell did you hope to gain by sharing our log over the galactic airwaves, and more importantly…” the Old Man paused here for effect, “…what does he know that you don’t?”

And that was all it took. When Elbert walked into the office, he was already broken from years of subservience and regret. He had been burrowing into himself, trying to hide from the eyes he constantly felt on him, not just watching, but accusing him. Accusing him of the greatest crime a human can commit – betrayal. And now, after all those years of hiding his shame, the thought of going to Jerry for help, perhaps for forgiveness, was the plaster he needed to begin putting himself back together. He hadn’t really admitted it to himself until the Old Man called him out, but now that it was out in the open, he was shocked to find that he felt free. Maybe for the first time since that awful day, he finally felt free. Elbert raised his head and looked directly at the Old Man. He walked right up to his desk, reached into the humidor on the desk and helped himself to an automatically cut and lit cigar. He went to the table in the corner, and sat himself down upon it, legs dangling off the edge, looking down at the Old Man. He took a long drag to cement his new position.

Then...he coughed. And he coughed.

The Old Man burst into laughter. “Dixon. Put that down. You look like an idiot.” Elbert took another drag and coughed again. And again. The Old Man shouted, “Miss Dixon, bring me a glass of water.”

And Miss Dixon was there, next to Elbert, handing him the glass. And she was gone.

“Alright, Dixon, have your fun.”

Elbert drank down the water, and extinguished the cigar in what was left of it. “How can you smoke this stuff?”

“Dixon, focus.”

Elbert looked the Old Man in the face. “I know you’re going to fire me no matter what I say, so I might as well say my piece.” He took a deep breath, and with a determination in his eye he had shown maybe twice in his life, said his piece. “Dr. Strohman was right. The problems I had with his functions were nominal, and could not possibly have created the effects I posited they could. I knew that then and I know it now. I didn’t care. I did not want to spend the rest of my life digging dirt in the colonies with a bunch of redneck criminals. They’d have torn me apart.” Elbert pulled back into himself briefly, as he remembered the fear that drove him to his greatest act of cowardice.

Then, gathering himself up, he said, “But after 12 years, I don’t think I even care about that anymore. The only thing that matters to me now is the science, and when I failed to figure this one out, I finally cracked. I said to myself, ‘Pete, it’s time to man up and tell the good doctor you were wrong. Then maybe he’ll figure a way out of this and it’ll turn out that everything is alright after all. Maybe if he helps, the boss will even let him come back.’ But most of all, I was worried that I had finally seen proof that the doctor’s worst fears had been realized, and I panicked. I knew I had to do something but I didn’t know what, so I contacted the only person I knew who could help.

“When I had him on the vid, I realized that I couldn’t ever really get his attention unless he saw the log himself. After what I had done, and 12 years to stew on it, why would he believe me? So I showed him the log. Not that it matters. We are tearing the universe apart, and when it goes, this company and all the ’bots will go with it.”

Elbert leaned forward, the half empty glass of water holding a soggy cigar still in his hand, and wept. “God, why didn’t I back him up? Was it just cowardice, or was I really that stupid? I just don’t know anymore. Maybe I never did.”

The Old Man took it all in, and looked up from his desk, unmoved. This was not the first time a human had attempted to move him with a story of heartfelt sorrow, but he could always hope it would be the last. In any case, he had the information he needed, and had already made up his mind as to what to do next with Dr. Peter Elbert.

“Thank you for the clarity, Dixon. Your motives are clear. Your employment is terminated. As I understand it, the colonies are currently overstaffed, so you are free to remain on the planet until alternative employment becomes available. Your years of service will be noted in your record, alongside your egregious errors of judgment. Please show yourself out.”

And the Old Man went back to the work at his desk.