Maya Bohnhoff: Pipe Dreams

Illustration by Steven Cavallo

It was a normal day for Beckett Hodge. Which is to say an extraordinary day, for Beckett Hodge attracted extraordinary situations, things, and people the way black pants attract white cat hair.

Beckett—Beck to wife and friends—was, to outward appearances, an archetype—the mild-mannered and somewhat nerdish professor of computer science, habitually forgetful and distracted, his mind engaged in a never-ending background computation. He did not drink; he did not swear; he forgot his own birthday and resorted to electronic wizardry to remember his wife’s. He was a renowned lecturer and an author, too, of thick, arcane tomes about AI, nanotech and enviro-programming; every one written in what his wife, Marian, called “technese.”

In Beckett’s head, he was a fictioneer—a storyteller—though no one had ever read a word of his fiction. The clutter of scientific and academic accomplishments was merely a source of income, something he just did, the same way that he breathed, ate, slept and performed other necessary functions.

Beckett Hodge wanted people to be as impressed with his fiction as they were with the rest of the things he did, but as he approached his thirty-sixth birthday, that goal seemed no closer than it had the day he first opened a word processor file to write about something other than neural nets, bio-computing, and self-policing AI security systems.

He was bemused by his academic publisher’s lack of interest in seeing a work of fiction with his name on it. “You write like a programmer,” Terrence Lance had said, upon reading Beck’s synopsis for a novel. When Beckett failed to see the problem with that, he’d added, “Write what you know, Beck.” Beck disregarded the commentary. After all, the fellow edited and published textbooks, not novels. He had downloaded the synopsis to three publishers anyway, using his academic credits to get a foot in the electronic door. Nearly six months later, he was still waiting for the door to budge.

He put that out of mind now and assembled his lecture notes, penned neatly on yellow legal paper. He loved the feel of paper between his fingers, the smell of it when he flipped a page. It was a soothing touch of realism for a mind that habitually courted the abstract. He loved the smell of magazines and books, too. In his vivid imagination, the pages that held his own fiction were especially savory.

He brought his mind firmly back to the here and now—not usually so difficult a thing for a man who lived for the nanosecond—and began his lecture on the dynamics of programming the mood-sensitive entertainment system. The hall was packed; students stood along the walls and in every nook and cranny that would hold a body. Beck knew his peers speculated about his popularity—was it the subject matter or the fact that he reminded his students of a Disney character who might any moment begin lecturing on “flubber” instead of silicon?

When the lecture was over, Beck had a series of appointments: one with the head of the life-science department, one with the board of directors of a major financial institution, the third with his government liaison, Colonel Traynor. The department head wanted him to consider teaching another class in nanoprogramming, the bankers wanted to commission him to design one of his patented security system for their customers’ valuables, Traynor was negotiating enhancements to a security and defense system Beck had put in place the year before for the Department of Defense.

He didn’t want to teach another class in nanotech, and said as much. He found it difficult to concentrate during the meeting with the contingent from First Continental Finance. He accepted the job with his mind on how he might punch up the opening of his latest attempt at a novel, saw the bankers out of his office, and settled in to grab half an hour of writing time before his military escort arrived to take him to his next meeting. He wasn’t certain he really wanted the First Continental job—it would distract him just that much more from his writing—but he supposed Marian would think him foolish to turn it down. And as to the military contract… He disliked working with the government in a vague, abstract way. They were an incredibly paranoid group of people. He had difficulty thinking the way they did, but Marian said that was because he was naive. The thought brought a smile to his wide lips. Marian could say things like that and mean them as compliments.

To Beck, the DOD was a paradox: having determined never to use their deadly arsenal of nuclear weaponry, they must now make certain no one else could use it either. It was as if a man had purchased a gun to protect his home and family, only to decide he couldn’t bring himself to point it at anyone and pull the trigger. It was therefore necessary to go to great lengths to hide the gun, to lock it away in a series of increasingly forbidding vaults, complete with booby traps. The whole idea seemed absurd, and despite the fact that the contract would bring him several million dollars by completion, he would have still cheerfully advised the government to simply get rid of the gun—or at the very least to unload it and throw the bullets away. Instead they had opted for a “vault.” Now, they wanted it strengthened and enlarged.

The meeting with Traynor was cordial and orderly and Beck could hardly wait to get away. Specs in hand, he had the driver take him straight home. He was in a hurry to get into his office to get to work. The notes on the first chapter of his novel were burning a hole in his briefcase.

Marian was already home. “Took off early,” she said, handing him a glass of orange juice. “Had a lunch meeting with Liz Harris. God, that woman gives me a headache. Acts like she’s our only account. You have e-mail from a publisher.”

It took him a full five seconds to catch that, even though he’d had ten years of practice sorting through the diverse information his wife could layer into her dialogue. “I what?”

“I checked the mail.” He was already on his way into the office, orange juice sloshing; she raised her voice. “Some guy named Bourbon—Seton House, I think.”

The name was Laurence Bourbon. The publisher was Sefton House. The message made a sharp, shrill tingle of anticipation vibrate up Beck’s spine: I’m going to be in Boston next week and I’d like to meet you and discuss your manuscript. You have some very interesting ideas and I think we can work together. Lunch Tuesday at the Sheraton? Please let me know if this is agreeable. His Internet address followed. There was a 3-D scan with the message, showing a smiling man, probably above middle-age, with sparkling dark eyes and distinguished streaks of gray in his dark hair and beard.

Shaking, Beck dropped into his chair and logged onto the Net. I find it very agreeable, he sent back. Around one? I have classes until noon. He sent back a canned scan of himself so Bourbon would be able to recognize him. The reply came while he was sitting there staring at the original e-mail, sipping but not tasting his orange juice. “You have mail,” the computer informed him.

One is fine. Meet you in the main lobby. I look forward to it.

Beck felt a hand on his shoulder, followed almost immediately by warm lips at his ear. “You’re shaking,” Marian murmured. “I used to do that to you, once.”

Beck was not so much the absent-minded professor as to miss that cue. “Why don’t we go into town tonight? We’ll have dinner and go for a long walk in the Commons.”