Hayden Planetarium

July 2027

The door to the Office opened, a secretary let in a shy young man. He seemed in his early twenties. He had long wet curly hair and while shaved, it was obvious this wasn’t his natural look. Neil, sitting at his desk got up to shake his hand. The Astrophysicist was almost seventy now. The young programmer walked in and sat for what seemed to be an interview.

“I was told you are applying for a job of head of IT,” began the deep voice. Reading his resume, he added, “I see here you hold a here a PhD in artificial intelligence.”

“Yes sir,” replied nervously the man.

He read, “The thesis was on something you call Adaptive Field Programming, I like the title itself. Care to offer more?”

“Well, it is my theory that programming any artificial intelligence is a waste of time, nothing can replace millions of years of evolution, but we can recreate evolution within a computer. Speed it up. That we can do.”

Any lesser man would not have instantly understood the importance, but Neil did. “Young man I think you are onto something. You need a post Ph D in that field, continue why apply for this job? Mister,” he looked down on the resume to read the name, “Mister Vouvelakis,” he read. “Georges Vouvelakis with an S at the end of George. That name rings a bell.”

The man pushed himself up and went to one area of his office where thousands of gifted books were stacked. He began moving them around until he finally found what he was looking for, two larger works. He returned to his desk, opened the first page and ripped off the memory card which looked like a simple credit card.

He handed it over to the young man. “I love a puzzle just as much as the next guy. This is for you. It came with instructions. You must upload this into your project, what ever that is.”

Georges grabbed the card from the physicist’s hands. He was equally puzzled. Neil did not let him read the inscription. He slapped the cover close. On his desk was a phone, he dialed and waited for the connection. The programmer was waiting, eyes wide open. This was the weirdest interview.

“Frank, this is Neil. I have a student here, he needs to finish his project in computer engineering, it’s a Post Doc. Trust me on this. Can you pull some strings? They don’t need much in this field a computer or two.” There were words, polite exchanges of words and he hung up. “You did your Doc in MIT, that was the Dean, he will slut you up to finish. The card, remember.”

The student, puzzled by the full adventure got up and walked out. That was the nature of paradoxes in time, they were impossible to lift.

The moment the door closed, Neil reread the author’s card. There was something here. He flipped the first page and began the long read and did not like what he found.