Discovery Ch 05 10

*** Authors Note: Any similarity to real persons or places described within this story is probably not an accident, although I've made the effort not to expose anybody too much. The story circulates around a girl I met once, who told me some of her story. I will always regret not having spent more time with her. Enjoy & please leave your comments, good or bad! ***

*****

I awoke with the voice of sadness still ringing through my head, though given the pleasures of the last 2 days, god knew why. "No tomorrow. No tomorrow..."

"Damn you Gary!"

I rolled over and kissed Kelly on her forehead, then her closed eyes one at a time. Then her hair where it fell around her ears. Finally she groaned though I knew straight away she had been awake way ahead of me.

"I need to go Kell."

"I know mate. Go now, no goodbyes eh? I'm going to chill here a bit" the last said as she turned face down into the sheets that now shared the mix of our scents.

I nearly lost it then. It wasn't lost to me that she couldn't bring herself to say my name.

There was nothing I could say. I swallowed my chest and grabbed a tshirt and shorts from my floor'd-robe before heading for the bathroom. After a quick shower and brush of teeth and hair I was out the front door. It was all I could do to keep from racing back to Kelly. I kept my thoughts on Conor and my focus on the memory of his grey eyes as I stumbled down the stairs and out to the street.

I saw a couple of guys hanging out the front of the café across the street smoking and I stepped across the road towards them as one hand dug around in my bag for my phone.

"Hey boys, mind if I bum a smoke?"

"Yeah sure mate" one of them said as he reached into his pocket for his packet and handed one over to me. "You OK mate?"

As I took this offered lighter and lit the smoke with a quick puff, I suddenly realised I probably looked anything but OK. Apart from being freshly showered, I'm sure my eyes must have carried the strain of a long night and day and probably the redness of tears barely restraining themselves.

I looked up at him and suddenly realised that I actually didn't know if I was OK. "Mate I don't know. You ever felt like life was over kind of before it began?" Right then I recalled Kelly's words, 'you're too young to be making babies'. Another problem for another moment I thought to myself.

Just as he began to answer I saw a cab doing a slow drive by down the hill towards us. Without thinking I thrust the lit cigarette back at him "Don't waste a good smoke buddy, thankyou!" as I stuck my hand out and waved the cab down.

"Greenwich thanks mate" I almost sighed as I jumped into the passenger's seat. As the cabbie mumbled a reply I pulled out my phone and dialled Sarah's number. She answered on about the fifth ring.

"Sarah, it's Sam. I'm on my way back, sorry I should have given you some warning."

"That's OK Sam, Conor is still at the office. He's checked in a couple of times and I think he's doing his best to stall coming home. It's nearly 5 though, so we won't have a lot of time..."

"Well, Sarah. I'm not sure I can take much more than the short version after the couple of days I've had, whatever it is you have to tell me."

There was silence for a long, long moment. "Yeah OK Sam. I'll do my best. See you soon."

As the cab pulled into the curb in front of Conor's house, Sarah was already standing there, her arms tightly wrapped around her body in that classic girly defensive posture. I sighed as I paid the cabbie and stepped out of the cab.

"Hi."

"Hi." She replied as I moved up next to her. "Well then, shall we do this?"

"Yeah".

She smiled then and hooked her arm into mine. As she led me towards the house she started her story.

"Nearly 3 years ago I got let out of prison." As we headed through the front door and towards the back of the house, she took a left into the open kitchen. She reached into the fridge and pulled a couple of beers out and popped the tops, continuing as she pushed one of the stubbies in my direction, which I gratefully accepted.

"When they let me out, I had a change of clothes, a referral for accommodation in a short term share house and a hundred and twenty bucks in cash.

"I stood out the front for about 10 minutes wondering what to do first. I had no one to meet me. No one to call. No idea where to go.

"Then this old shit box pulled up in front of me and who gets out of it?"

"Let me guess. Conor?"

"Yah. I'm going to need to sit down for the next bit. I haven't talked about this for a while." We wandered down the path past the pool, through the back fence and, to my surprise, past the bench we had shared this morning towards the bottom of the path that ended at the boat house. Sarah sat down on the pier that led from the path to the wide doors of the boathouse and patted the timber planking next to her. "There's a fucking plane in that boathouse in front of us. Can you believe it Sam?"

I just looked blankly from her to the large wooden shed and shook my head.

"That's the measure of the man I'm about to tell you all about. Apparently a boat just wasn't good enough. But, having said that, there is absolutely nothing about Conor that is waste or excess. God knows he's paid for everything he has, in lived pain currency Sam, every last coin of it. The plane inside that there shed was the last thing he spent money on, that I know of, and only for one really specific purpose. But I'm going to let him show you why, in his own time.

"Right now, let me just start with what I know."

I took the proffered seat as she patted the planks of the pier next to her again and she continued, almost in a whisper. "I was in prison because I killed his wife and his best mate and almost his daughter too. I'll spend the rest of my life paying that one back and enjoy every damn moment of my penance too Sam. Conor will probably try to tell you that without me, none of this..". She waved her hands around her then. " ...could ever have existed quite this way. "

She paused and looked out towards the harbour, where some kids were noisily shouting their way past in a bunch of small sailing boats, obviously racing each other. A single tear drop formed at the bottom of the eye that was closest to me and found its way to the top of her lip before she continued.

"I don't know if that's true. I'm pretty sure that Conor would have found his own way. Ah God. I'm a psychologist nowadays Sam, not a philosopher, so what do I know. Let's stick to the facts eh?"

I reached up then and wiped the stray tear from her mouth, where it had started to wind its way around to her chin. Then she looked back at me and smiled, for the last time tonight.

"Let's start with his folks, coz that's as far back as I know.

"Conor's parents were from Ireland. They were so Irish stereotype, you'd cringe to read about them in a book..."

*****

Aran Islands, Ireland, June 1985

"Whoa Mr Walker a choppy water to welcome us home then!" The deck hand yelled up to the wheelhouse from his position next to the forward mooring line, with a loop of the rope swinging loosely from his hand.

"Not to worry Liam me lad, I spy a raven head atop a mighty fine dress come to welcome ye home, if I'm not mistaken." The skipper shouted back down from the wheelhouse as the small fishing boat pulled into the docks at Inis Mor.

"Looks like the daughters' of the well to do haven't found their way home as yet."

Liam felt his face colour clear through to the shade of the deep seas they had just departed and, not for the first time, thanked his parents for his naturally dark colouring that tended to hide such embarrassment.

"Aww will you leave off Mr Walker, you know their likes are not for such as me."

The skipper just chuckled knowing full well what his deckhand had just said was more than reality. The young ladies of the various universities and wealthier families from around Ireland would visit every summer for several weeks, taking in the sea air and the clean open spaces of the Aran Islands.

Although they often made their presence known to the lads who tended the boats and farms of Inis Mor, their flirting rarely went beyond a teasing wave or a fleeting glimpse of a white thigh from beneath their summer dresses.

Liam looked up briefly and sought out the aforementioned dark hair as he deftly flicked the looped rope towards the closest mooring bollard. As the rope caught and he started to pull it in, he found the eyes that were looking for his. And then, almost at the same time she found his.

A touch of connection for the briefest moment before a quick smile was ended as her friends, giggling, dragged her back up the laneway that ran between the dockside storesheds that made up the waterfront of Inis Mor.

Sighing, Liam finished drawing the boat into the wharf and joined the rest of his crew as they started to unload their take into the crates of ice standing newly delivered on the dockside.

An hour later found Liam lying flat on his back, dozing behind a dry stone farm wall, a mile or so from the town, before a soft voice awoke him from his near slumber. "So were you planning on letting a maiden welcome her sailor home then at all Liam, my lad?"

"I wasn't, for my lass is no maiden for sure. Unless I was dreaming the last time and the time before that she welcomed me home?"

He opened his eyes as her scent brushed across his him and her soft black hair fell across his face. "Well then, I think the lad had better let his lass welcome him home again, just to be sure of it!" She giggled as she lifted her dress up over her white thighs to give him again the gift he never tired of receiving.

Sometime later she spoke as the sky darkened and the buzzing of the night insects invaded their space. "Liam lad, there is something you need to know. We waited so long to do what we wanted to do. I'll never forget that boy on the fishing boat that gave me my first kiss. We have been so careful to keep this from our kin and kind, but of one precaution I have not been so attentive. I did you a disservice man and I hope you will forgive me and love me whatever.

"I think you are to become a father and we the stereotype that is Ireland. The love between us that clashes with the versions of the God that divides us, the bombings, the never ending fighting. The hatred I fear my father will hold in his heart for you, the poor Catholic fisherman."

As she turned her face back into his, she spoke again. "I don't want to be a part of that story. Take me away from here and all that pain Liam ..."

*****

"Liam's dad had died when he was just a small boy and Mr Walker was the captain of the boat where he learnt to fish and sail a boat and earn money to look after his mum.

"Many years later his would become Conor's surname, but that's getting ahead of myself.

"Liam and Grace ran and ran and ran. Apparently Grace's dad did all he could to try and pull them in, following them as far as Liverpool and then Madrid.

"They changed their names then and by the time they had landed in Sydney, off a cruise liner which Liam had signed onto as a hand and she a passenger; they had lost him and Ireland was all behind them.

"Liam found a regular income working the fishing boats out of Gosford up north and also a part time gig tending the oyster shoal farms that speckled the Hawkesbury River.

"As payment for this, one of the local oyster farmers let them settle down in an old shack near Wondabyne. Christ Sam, such a beautiful and also abandoned part of the world you never did see, if you've ever taken the train to Newcastle! But it suited them fine for a time and they were happy the small family.

"Anyway. One day, Liam's fishing boat never came home, along with the 4 men aboard it. And as Conor would say, his mum never was the same again.

"But the oyster farmer was a kind man and let Grace and the young Conor stay, free of rent, in the old house.

"Soon, Conor was proving himself to be a little different. His maths teacher at his school in Gosford, as luck would have it, wasn't just your average high school teacher. He was a retired professor recently returned from Oxford who was just keeping his hand in, whilst enjoying a semi-retirement on the Woy Woy peninsular. He picked out Conor straight away as being a little bit special."

*****

Wondabyne on the Hawkesbury, Australia, June 1998.

"Mama, I'm ready to go. The train will be here soon and the dinghy is out of fuel so I'll be rowing to the station."

She turned her face to him then and the effort behind her smile was not lost on the boy as he threw his bag over the railing of the small cottage's verandah into the boat awaiting patiently below.

Grace looked up from her journal and tiredly waved a pencil in his direction as she spoke. "That's OK lad, when you get back we'll get some more petrol for the boat."

She blinked then and closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. Then she opened her eyes again. "I'm sorry your father is not here to see you off. He'd have been so proud of you".

She closed her eyes again before the young man spoke as he sat down on the rough-hewn planks that formed the ramp down to their small jetty.

"Tell me again mama. Of the fishing boat?" She smiled as he knew she always would at the memory.

"Your father had the blackest hair and the greyest eyes. I swear I could see them all the way from Dublin when I was away at school. On holidays in the Arans, the girls would tease me endlessly at the look he would give me as his boat was coming into the docks..."

As her voice trailed out into the drug induced sleep that was most of her days, the boy stood again and wandered down to the small jetty that serviced their property. Within 15 minutes or so, he'd moored the small boat and was watching the incoming intercity train pull into the single carriage length platform that was Wondabyne station.

As the door of the carriage opened a welcome face stepped out to meet him.

"And a grand morning it is Conor. Welcome to the train that is come to change your life!"

"Mr Beatty! I didn't expect you to be coming at all today!"

"Nah Conor, I'm not coming with you. I promised Mrs Beatty that I'd look after your ma, while you were gone. On you go then and feel comfortable that she'll be well watched over."

"Thankyou Sir. Michigan eh? I can't wait!"

"I bet you can't boy. Eh, door's about to close, quickly now..."

*****

Sarah continued "Conor was 14 when he was accepted into a mathematics program at MIT. The 2nd youngest ever as I understand it and the youngest by a long way to finish the program at 16. He actually completed his Australian high school graduation via the post, in the first few weeks he was in the US, with the help of Mr Beatty that is. Conor never told me how this whole thing was paid for, though I suspect this Mr Beatty had a large part to play in that too.

"Ah Sam. It doesn't get any better from here. Conor's mum died only a month or so after he had left. She knew what was coming and had made Mr Beatty promise not to tell Conor until he had finished the first part of the program a few months later and returned home.

"She had been in the final stages of breast cancer you see, when Conor had left, though he never knew just how sick she was. She wanted him to focus on the opportunity that fate had delivered to him.

"Conor refused to speak again to Mr Beatty till last year when I talked him into returning to his old digs and making his peace. I went with him. The old man was in a nursing home in Woy Woy and didn't even recognise Conor. Mrs Beatty did though and it was not a good experience for her or Conor or me.

"Anyway, after he had buried his mum, he went back to the states and spent the next several years moving between MIT and Sydney University, pursuing several research programs of a kind. I won' pretend to understand what they were, but I do know he was doing ground-breaking stuff, researching the first early stages of artificial intelligence and stuff like that ..."

*****

University of Sydney, Australia, January 2001

"Well then Conor, what is this?"

"It's the solution paper you asked me to compile Bob and a nice piece of work too, if you don't mind me sounding a bit arrogant. And something else I came across whilst I was at it. You see if you take the logical routines from that lot and create a stubbed "passive" input, then you can start to create logical deductions that would self-create new ones with the right programming, as long as you had the means to circulate back to replace the stubs with a new input value. Kind of a basic artificial reasoning if I can put it that way..."

"A.I. Conor, really? Now that is arrogant!"

"No Bob. I said artificial reasoning. That's still On/Off binary. But it's not a big step to that Holy Grail you are so scared of playing with!"

"Ah Conor, be careful for what you wish for mate. That 'Holy Grail' you speak of has all sorts of 'brave new world' things entombed within its very whispered utterance."

The old mathematics professor winked then, even as he said his piece. After all it was his duty to encourage as well as promote restraint. "But seeing we are talking about grails, tell me more about your ideas."

"Well, for mine the secret it how we expand the idea of artificial reasoning is to create a feedback loop, so that every time the algorithm comes to a consensus, it starts again with the last outcomes as the primary inputs for the next evolution of calculations. Just like the human brain does, but much quicker, obviously. Essentially it becomes a logarithmic expansion of mathematical outcomes from each logical end.

"The problem we have is that the technology we have now can only deal with maybe 5% of the computational power we need to run each range of new variable inputs."

"And another is we would do this without the control of the pathos that makes us human Conor."

The student weltered for a moment under the stern eyes of his mentor. "Yes that is true, Bob, that is true."

"Well Conor, this route you seek may well make you rich and famous, but it is also the kind of tool that uncontrolled, could make you the father of a monster. Is this what you mum would have wanted for you?"

The student sighed then deeply. "I don't really know what mum would have wanted. Or my da for that matter. He was just a fisherman at the end of the day. And she was just a woman who loved a fisherman and died all too soon nonetheless."

Then as he had all so quickly learnt to do in recent years, he matched his quick mind to an equally cruel retort.

"Mr Beatty once told me that he had been speaking to you a long time to set me up for the program that set me on this course Bob. If you are so keen on the human pathos, why don't you tell me what a fisherman's wife would have wanted for her only son?"

Professor Robert Petrovsky just sighed then as he often did when talking with Conor and returned to his papers, knowing there was no comforting answer to Conor's request. He had seen his entire family slaughtered at the hands of the Nazis in Poland 57 years previously when he was a boy himself. But then, what did he know against the seemingly tireless will of the angry young man?

*****

"I never met Bob Sam. He died several years before I met Conor and, from all reports, Conor was beside himself. And so was Charlie, Conor's research partner.

"Oh yeah Sam, I haven't got to him yet. Ah, Sam. Poor Charlie. Of all those left behind, he is my own personal regret. I treated him like shit. From day one, I just saw him as a means to an end.

"In those days, I just wanted another way to get my fix and Kate wasn't far behind me on that score..."

*****

Erskineville, Sydney, Australia, March 2009.

"Conor, we've done it, we've done it, we are fucking rich and fucking famous and I am never going to have to do online dating ever again for the rest of my fat fucking life my man! Ah ha ha ha." The last was the worst version of a Bond villain laugh that Conor had ever heard.