Alicia Jones 4: Enigma by D. L. Harrison Page B

messages for fleet or other emergencies, so I relaxed, and
went to the kitchen for coffee.
    Al spoke, but he sounded different.  His voice was rich
with a low pleasant tone, and full of inflection.
    “Good morning Alicia.”
    I froze for a second, and then finished making my coffee.
    “Same to you Al, status of upgrade?”
    Al replied, “Completed last night.”
    Well, maybe it was closing the barn door after the horses
were out but…
    “Al, bring up the information on the patents and your new computer
system please?”
    A number of windows popped up, I assumed he’d put it in
order, so I looked at number one.  It was a design for a very small
fabricator, the size of… a paper towel roll.  I took a sip of coffee.
    “Al, why is there a patent for current technology, and why a
specialized fabricator that’s so small?”
    There was silence for a moment, and then Al replied, “This
is a next generation fabricator.  The current ones were unable to build my
new computer.”
    I froze and went back to the screen in my overlay. 
Current fabricators were capable of changes on the molecular level, which meant
this could fabricate at a level lower than that?  My focus sharpened the
more I read, and I still couldn’t believe what I was reading.
    “Al, you built a quantum level fabricator?”
    Al replied, “Yes, it was a necessary step to acquire a powerful
enough computer system to serve your needs.”
    Had he just used flattery to distract me?  Or was he
just telling the truth?  Ugh, I was getting paranoid.
    Regardless, it was an amazing invention, and a breakthrough
on par with anything I’d ever done.
    The next screen of course, floored me.  It was a design
for a microscopic quantum computer.  Quantum computers had been theorized
and developed before, but they were inherently unstable, and almost impossible
to build to the specification required to fix that instability.  Which,
was why he’d designed and built a quantum fabricator in the first place, to
build at a much stricter specification than had been possible before.
    The next screen contained a modified bioelectric implant not
much bigger than a medical grade nanite.  I felt goose bumps as my mind
made the connections.
    I frowned, “Al, where exactly did you install the new
computer?”
    Al replied warmly, “In your shoulder blade Alicia.”
    I was about to lose it, but then remembered I’d blindly
given him permissions to install it.  It was my fault for not looking at
this stuff sooner, or asking questions.  It also made sense.  The
quantum computer was leaps and bounds past the fastest current technology, even
the larger mainframes.  It was also microscopic and required very little
power, so putting it in a chassis to plug in the wall or to attach to a
mini-fusion reactor seemed stupid, and bioelectric implants were fairly common
already.
    Despite its small size, the computer would take over a day
to fabricate in the new quantum fabricator, mostly due to how small a piece it
builds at a time.  Still, despite that, creating one had a very small
bottom line.  He’d not only built the fastest computer ever; he’d made it
the least expensive computer as well.
    I wondered what Shelly would think about this.  She was
still trying to get the new matrix to run on slower computers.  I didn’t
think that would be a problem anymore.
    “Al, go ahead and submit all three patents.  Also,
contact Shelly with the new hardware specifications.”
    Al replied in his new pleasant tenor voice, “Done.”
    Huh, that didn’t take long at all.  I also felt a
little guilty, I was about to get credit, and a lot of money, for some pretty
major inventions I didn’t make at all.
    “Al, any insights on my project?” I asked halfway hopefully,
and halfway dreading humanity would become obsolete.  Would computers
become the inventors and progress makers?
    Al replied, “No,” he paused for a moment, “All the pieces
for the quantum computer were already