Free The 2084 Precept by Anthony D. Thompson Page B

actually moving the physical matter to
which the information is attached. They have done this repeatedly
over a distance of three meters with a 100% success rate. This has
solved the problems encountered by your University of Maryland a
few years ago, in which only one of every 100 million attempts
succeeded.
    “It certainly sounds fascinating, Mr.
Parker, but……”
    “Allow me if you will, Mr. O’Donoghue, just
to summarize. In Delft, they are now testing at a distance of more
than a kilometer. And if they succeed at that, they will have
obtained an answer to the Irish physicist John Bell’s 1964 theorem,
which raised the query as to whether particles connected via
quantum entanglement can communicate information; and not only
that, but faster than the speed of light. That is all I have to say
at the moment, Mr. Parker. You have started on the path and you
will one day achieve the ability my species already possesses,
assuming of course that you survive long enough. And whether you
choose to call it hypnosis, telepathy, thought transfer, or
teleportation doesn’t really matter.”
    "Uh huh, well maybe. But it all sounds very
futuristic to me, Mr. Parker. Nevertheless, and be that as it may,
it seems that I do owe you some thanks. It certainly looks as if I
have the chance of an agreeable evening ahead of me. And, if you
will allow, I have a final, last question on another subject. I am
an interviewee of yours. Why me? And have you any others, have you
paid money to other people as well? And based on what criteria do
you select them?"
    "I must admit, Mr. O’Donoghue, that I was
wondering whether you would ask this question as well. The search
for interviewees has indeed been very haphazard, for two major
reasons. First of all, I am not in a position to be able to judge in advance if a person is in possession of the
necessary intelligence and necessary knowledge which, needless to
say, only genes and an education of a certain level can provide. I
have consequently been obliged to talk to many people, nearly all
of whom were inadequate for my purposes, and a few were simply not
interested. Not unexpected of course. But there were side-benefits
to the search in that I was able to increase my insight into the
wide deviations in your species' individual intelligence and
knowledge levels."
    He looked at me again. I looked back at him
again.
    "I then abandoned the ad hoc search idea” he
said, “and applied specific research criteria to determine which
candidates would merit a contact. The criteria used are individual
to each case and of little interest to you as you would not
understand them anyway. There have been five people who appeared to
meet the necessary standards up to this point. Three of those
agreed to a meeting with me but didn't appear, presumably judging
me to be a fraudster or a lunatic, or both. A fourth person, a
young lady, did turn up for our meeting and received her €100,000
in the same way as you have received yours. But that was the last I
saw of her. She didn't appear for the next meeting as planned and I
haven't heard from her since. I presume she arrived at the same
conclusion as the other three, perhaps also concluding that the
situation was not without risk, perhaps even a potentially
dangerous risk of the kind specific to young females on your
planet. And that this risk outweighed the slight possibility, as
she probably evaluated it, of receiving a further €400,000."
    Understandable. Weigh the size of the risks
and compare to the potential benefits, see which way the scales
fall, and take a decision. As I am doing right now.
    "And the fifth person," he continued, "is
yourself, Mr. O'Donoghue. I need only one interviewee for the
purposes of this project and I would be delighted if it turns out
to be you, you seem to fit the bill very well. Nevertheless, I
appreciate that may turn out not to be the case. In which event, I
shall simply have to continue with the process until I am
successful.