Eddie closed his eyes to relish the sensation as it washed over him. Everyone else looked on in envy, wishing they could hear even part of what he was so enjoying. He moved his finger up and down, then side to side. “The stylus vibrates vertically as well as horizontally, causing the transducer to produce varying voltage, which is amplified and fed into the speakers.” He pointed to the speakers on either side of him. “The physical movements are converted into electrical energy, which is then converted into acoustic energy.”
After a moment, he lifted the needle from the record, and the music stopped. “But when it’s no longer audible, where does that energy go?” He looked around the room to the various members of the audience like a master showman. “Ha! Wrong question, right? We know it’s here. Know it, know it, know it!” He looked in one corner, then another. He checked under a trash can, then peeked behind the whiteboard.
The room was SILENT. Or, at least, as silent as it could be given the constant din of the fluorescent lighting, heating vents, and other nuisances, which Eddie did his best to ignore.
He continued. “The question is, what form?”
Skylar looked on in amazement as he moved to the echo-box prototype, which was now connected to a somewhat bulky-looking laptop computer. At the press of a button, the sides of the echo box sprang open, revealing eight one-inch satellite microphones pointed around the room. Each one cost $20,000. When Eddie clicked a command on the laptop, the microsatellites came to life, performing a perfectly synchronized ballet as they acoustically mapped the room.
Their movements were mesmerizing. Programming them had been a nine-month project during which Eddie almost never left his room. Everyone on the staff had grown worried about him except for Dr. Fenton, who had assured them that he would never let any harm come to any of their patients, especially not Eddie.
The statement was a lie. Eddie would have had no trouble flagging it as such, had he ever heard it. Which was why Fenton had never said it in front of him.
Everyone in the recreation room sat perfectly still, staring at the echo box, except for Nurse Gloria, who moved slowly toward Eddie.
“The basis for sound-wave retrieval and reconstruction, which is called acoustic archeology, has existed since 1969. We just haven’t had equipment sensitive enough to acoustically map an enclosed space or the algorithms necessary to re-create the original sound wave.” He paused for emphasis. “Until now.”
Several of his spectators turned toward the computer, realizing it did not bear any type of familiar brand name. That was because the machine wasn’t commercially available. It was a portable supercomputer, one of the very few in the world. Clocking in at 17.2 PFLOPS (petaflops, or quadrillions of calculations per second), the machine could easily make the International Supercomputing Conference’s biannual list of the five hundred fastest supercomputers in the world, if the government ever admitted this machine existed. There were fewer than a dozen laptops on the planet with this much unique computing power. The machine cost in excess of $3 million—which had utterly no meaning to Eddie, because he had never used money in his life. His father had never allowed him to buy anything as a child, and residents of Harmony House had no need for currency. They were never allowed to leave the facility, so no one on the staff had bothered to teach the patients about money and its purpose.
Gloria kept creeping toward him.
“While decaying infinitely, a sound wave retains a distinct signature, which can allow us to reconstruct its original form the same way a mastodon can be recreated from a partial bone fragment.” Eddie had read about the recent proof of gravitational waves when two different Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory detectors, instruments two and a half miles long, simultaneously moved one-thousandth the diameter of a proton. That was an almost unimaginable level of sensitivity, which had led Einstein to believe that no one would ever be able to prove his 1916 theory. It only took a hundred years. By comparison, Eddie’s scientific leap of faith was more of a small skip. He was truly certain the proof of his theory was at hand as he clicked “Reconstruct” on the laptop. The computer was SILENT for a moment, then produced a horrendous, shrill SCREECH.
Eddie cringed, quickly closing the laptop. He then exploded, screaming at the top of his lungs, “As soon as I can figure out what the equations are!”
He slapped himself hard across the face. Once. Twice. Then instinctively grabbed for any sharp object within reach to do some real damage. Nurse Gloria immediately moved to restrain him. His flailing arm punched her repeatedly in the face and pulled her hair, but she was not about to let go. She gritted her teeth as she held on tight. “Easy, Eddie. Take it easy.” He was hyperventilating and on the verge of a seizure.
The other patients all reacted immediately. The shy woman in the front row wearing the Harvard sweatshirt began to whimper uncontrollably. The heavyset Dartmouth guy in the back fled the room, pulling his hair out. Stanford, Princeton, Northwestern, and all the others screamed or cried or babbled incoherently.
Nurse Gloria raised her voice loud enough to be heard over the cacophony without sounding too alarming. “That’s all for today, everyone! Head on back to your rooms!”
More staff arrived quickly. So quickly, it was as if they had expected this to happen. Which, of course, they had. Each knew exactly what to do. They moved with precision. It was impressive. Skylar went toward Nurse Gloria, who continued holding Eddie tight, carefully pulling him down to the floor. Nurse Gloria turned to Skylar. “Do us all a favor. Before you think of them as geniuses, think of them as children, because that’s what they are.”
“How did you see it coming?”
The veteran nurse shook her head at the young doctor. Even with all her schooling, she still could not see what was right in front of her face. “I didn’t see anything, Doctor. It always happens at the exact same point every time he gives his lecture.”
“Always?”
“Since the day he first walked through the door.”
CHAPTER 14
Eddie’s Childhood Home, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 9, 2001, 4:00 p.m.
Eddie was eleven years, two months, seven days, and eight hours old when the envelope containing the brochure arrived at his home. His father brought it in from the mailbox. “What the hell is Harmony House?” he muttered out loud, in an accent that was pure Philadelphia. Their town house was small but respectable, a perfectly fine place for a residential electrician to call home in South Philly.
“I don’t know what Harmony House is,” Eddie answered. He had no such accent.
His father, Victor Parks, rarely got such official-looking envelopes except ones he didn’t want, like from the IRS or some stupid lawyer. “Shut up, Eddie. I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Who are you talking to? I’m the only other person here.”
Victor stopped and stared at his son. “You know how I told you there are some times I just need you to be quiet?”
“Yes.”
“This is one of ’em.”
Eddie turned back to the computer he had disassembled, whose parts now covered the kitchen table along with a half-eaten cheesesteak.
Victor passed him without looking up from the large envelope. “You’re going to be able to put all that back together, right?”
Eddie didn’t answer.
Victor repeated the question a little louder. “Right?”
Eddie still didn’t answer.
“Right, goddammit?”
“I thought this was one of those times you just need me to be quiet.”
“Answer the question!” Victor yelled.
Eddie yelled in response, “Yes, I am going to be able to put it back together.”
Shaking his head, Victor moved into the den, where he opened the brochure to Harmony House. Included in the packet was a letter addressed to Victor: Dear Mr. Parks, Harmony House is a government facility uniquely qualified to help your son, Edward . . .
The more Victor read, the more excited he became. Eddie could hear his father’s breathing get faster with excitement, kind of like it did sometimes when he watched the Eagles playing football on television. Harmony House said it could take good care of people with special needs like Eddie, and even help him in ways nowhere else could.