The Quantum Brain (Pulse Science Fiction Series Book 2) Read Free Page B

whether he had showered that day. He could not imagine a team of people helping him get ready for a day of work.
    Her lipstick and eyebrows looked painted on. They might have been tattooed. The brows look sharp enough to cut glass. Both her eyebrows and her lips looked to be coordinated in color to compliment the unique color of her dress.
    He looked her over as he waited uncomfortably for her to address him again after he obeyed her by taking a seat. In the pause, he noticed there was a ticking of a mechanical clock. It reminded him of the clacks he hated on a keyboard. As soon as he heard the sound, he couldn’t unhear it and it was messing with his focus.
    He wondered if she had plastic surgery and how many times. Her skin looked pulled tight. He knew she was old. He believed she was the oldest of the current partners. She was the daughter of the original Conrad. She had to be pushing sixty or seventy. She must have had plastic surgery, he decided.
    “Dr. Kell, I’d like to congratulate you on your recent breakthrough,” she said. Her voice had a sing song quality. He thought it might have been put on for effect. Some formal tone of a bygone era, he thought. He had not met directly with any of the partners enough to know for sure. He preferred to stay in the labs and deliver electronic reports to project managers.
    Thomas cleared his throat and looked down at the folders on his knees. “Which breakthrough do you mean?”
    She let out a high laugh. “Very good, Dr. Kell. I like confidence in our prize researchers. Even overconfidence can be useful as long as you keep delivering.”
    Thomas blinked and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
    He had no idea what she meant. Her comment made him feel like she looked at him like a piece of equipment she had bought to perform a task or like one of the cows on one of her family ranches in Montana or Idaho or wherever it was her family owned half the state.
    She said, “I mean, of course, the progress with communicating with the Q1 project.”
    Thomas nodded. “Yes, ma’am, we are pleased with the sudden boost in activity. It’s moving quickly toward its full potential finally.”
    “Finally, indeed,” Hazel Conrad said. “The partners are ready to move into the next phases and we want to tap you to oversee the entire production.”
    “Production?” Thomas narrowed his eyes. He was expecting to be giving reports on the current projects, but this seemed to be turning into something else entirely.
    “We are ready to move on the design parameters on Q2 processors and begin application into the android division,” she said.
    “Androids, Ms. Conrad?”
    “Yes, we believe the second generation will finally give our android designs the autonomy we need to make them broadly economically viable.”
    Thomas took a deep breath. “With respect, I’d like to slow down a moment to understand exactly what we are discussing.”
    She waved a hand up from the arm of her grand chair in a motion that almost looked like a dance move. “By all means, Doctor.”
    He nodded and looked down at the tea set as he spoke. “We are still trying to understand what we have in the first generation, Ms. Conrad. Like you said, our recent breakthrough, though promising, is very recent. Moving forward with Q2 at this point feels very premature to my thinking.”
    “I can understand why some would feel that way and see things that way,” she said to him in her sing song tone that suddenly felt mocking. His eyes moved from the tea set to the warrior tearing apart the porcelain lion with his bare hands. She continued. “That’s not how the CDR Group sees things. That is certainly not how we became the innovators that we are today and that is not the vision that will take us into the future. The next generation of our work is far bigger than you or me, Dr. Kell. This is about the next steps for humanity that will change the world for generations long after we are gone and CDR is still carrying on the work of