The ELI Event B007R5LTNS

Kelly Duncan at the other end of the corridor ascending the stairs to the ground floor, talking on her cell phone. He wondered briefly if she had overheard any of his conversation with the computer, then decided it didn’t matter.

    * * *

    “Hey,” Wheeler said amiably as he joined Kelly at the small table. “I’d have been here sooner, but ‘meet me at the Starbucks on the corner’ really isn’t all that specific.”
    “Well, even at this intersection you can only be wrong three times,” she smiled.
    “Good point. So, what’s the big secret?”
    “I didn’t want to discuss this in front of Eli. He hears everything now.”
    “That he does. You get anything from that error-correction text?”
    She shook her head. “Electron suppression, object vectors, it’s all Greek to me. But I talked to American Express customer service and my card was in fact used to buy a bus ticket to Denver and a plane ticket to L.A. Naturally, they assume the card was stolen. But how Eli got my card number isn’t the question. How he managed to buy the tickets isn’t even the question. The question is, why? ”
    Wheeler nodded, then stood and inclined his head toward the counter. “What would you like?”
    “Um, tall nonfat half-caf upside down caramel macchiato, light foam, no whip, one Equal, one Splenda.” Beat. Then, with a wink, “Gotcha! Oh, Wheeler, that expression is priceless!” She laughed out loud. So did the barista at the counter.
    “Glad I’m so amusing to you both,” Wheeler said with mock irritation. Turning to the red-haired, freckled youth, he said, “Two short blacks. That’s all.”
    “Gary Coleman, twice,” the kid called to his coworker at the espresso machine. Wheeler shook his head slowly at that lawsuit just waiting to happen.
    Kelly was deep in thought when he returned with the coffees. “Any ideas at all?” he asked, handing her the hot cup.
    “I don’t know, I was thinking maybe regenerative inhibition, or a failsoft reaction of some kind, perhaps bleed-through from some other process. Or maybe associative miscombination—false memories.”
    “Possibly,” Wheeler admitted, “but miscombination usually produces vague images, not highly specific...” He suddenly shot her a puzzled look. “Wait, what? Where did you get those concepts?”
    “I read a little,” she said smugly. “You know, bioelectronics, neurological assimilation, cognitive mechanics. Mostly stuff by some guy named Wheeler. Ever hear of him?”
    Wheeler snorted. “Never. And neither will anyone else unless I get to the bottom of this.” He blew across his coffee. “So, who were the tickets for?”
    “Oh. They couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me. They’re initiating an investigation. I tried to talk them out of it, but of course it’s mandatory. I’m afraid it’ll lead straight to Eli.”
    “No doubt. Yeah, that’ll be hard to explain: ‘Sorry guys, the computer stole my credit card.’ Lovely.”
    “You look like you’ve been up all night. Again.”
    “Just most of it,” Wheeler shrugged. “I shopped parts of E-L-One’s output around the underground blogosphere.”
    “What, your über-geekazoid conspiracy-theory paranoid basement-dweller buds?” Kelly said gently.
    “Yeah, that’s them all right,” Wheeler admitted.
    “Get any hits?”
    Wheeler sighed. “Just a rumor about a high-level security breach at a Defense Department computer center. Apparently a hacker back-doored their system and erased a bunch of data on some secret weapon or other. It sounded vaguely like the kind of drivel E-L-One was spouting, but there were no specifics, nothing to link it to him. Not even sure the story’s accurate, frankly.”
    “So, no hits then.”
    “Basically.”
    “Well, just to further muddy the water, I’ve got one more little tidbit to share. I was downstairs in the lab just before I called you.”
    “And?”
    “I overheard Professor Marx talking with Eli. I didn’t get it all, but it sounded like they were discussing a hypothetical situation, a no-win Rule One scenario.”
    “Okay,” Wheeler said, unconcerned. “E-L-One’s programming has been conditioned to expect the occasional no-win. What did he do?”
    “It’s not what Eli did, it’s what Marx did,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t just a dialogue. It seemed like he was... coaching Eli.”
    Now Wheeler sat up, interested. “Coaching? Coaching how?”
    “Marx was encouraging Eli, more like advising him, to withhold