Chapter 1

Author’s note:[ and ] delineate mind-to-mind dialog.

I had a hell of a time finding a job after high school that paid enough to do me any good. I was working this summer to earn enough money to afford my first year of college. My Dad was a salaried worker at a paint factory and certainly was not making enough money to send me to a fancy college. I wanted to be an electronics engineer, but I was forced to attend the local community college for at least my first year purely for financial reasons.

I had graduated from high school at the top of my class, so I was qualified for any college or university that I wanted to attend. There was no way that I could afford that, but my state had a scholarship program that would let me attend the local community college tuition-free. I could live at home and just pay part of the regular home expenses the way I had been doing with part-time jobs since I reached the age of 16.

However, I could work full time now that I was 18. Unfortunately, I was too honest when applying for a job. When asked, I did say that I was going to become a full-time student in the fall, and that shot me down with the company I was interviewing with. For obvious reasons, they didn’t want to spend the money training me for a job, but have me leave just when I was ready to make some money for them.

Fortunately, I found a job with a small company that “flipped” houses. They would buy a house for a distress price, spend a little money fixing it up, and then sell it as a refurbished home at a decidedly larger price. My job was simple—I was one of the employees who went into a house and stripped it of any furniture and anything else the previous owner had left behind.

The furnishings would be sold to a junk dealer, so my employer let us keep anything we wanted to top off our minimum wage. Well, by living at home with my parents and utilizing the same bedroom that I had lived in for years, I had no use for the furniture. On the other hand, I did check every drawer I encountered to make sure there was nothing inside that my parents, my siblings, or I could use.

At this house, there was a chest of drawers that looked promising. I kind of jumped ahead of the other two workers and grabbed the chest so that I could be the one who took anything worthwhile. We all did that when something struck our fancy, so my two coworkers did not complain. I opened the drawers one at a time and found nothing, so it looked like I was wasting my time.

However, when I opened the fourth drawer, I saw what looked like a gold man’s ring off to one side. I was running behind the other guys by now, so I just slipped the ring on the little finger of my left hand to keep it safe while I finished my work. I didn’t pay any more attention to the ring at that time, but I did notice that the ring seemed to shrink to become an exact fit for my finger. I ignored that feeling and continued to work.

After work, I walked the four blocks and caught the bus to take me home. I was the first one home. Mom and Dad both worked, Dad as production foreman at the paint factory and Mom as a clerk in the office. My sister usually visited one of her friends until supper time, and my brother played baseball at the park until supper.

This had been an especially warm day, so I was heading for the shower before my brother had a chance to use up all of the hot water. I stripped and entered the shower. As I turned on the water, I heard a voice. The strange thing beyond the fact that the house should have been empty was that the voice seemed to be inside my head.

[Sam Horwood, I am glad that you have found me, and we have some time alone.]

“What the hell is going on! Where are you? I can hear your voice, but there doesn’t seem to be any sound. If you are a thief, you are wasting your time. We don’t have anything here worth stealing.”

[I am not a thief. Just give me a chance to explain. Don’t panic when you hear my story. You are not going crazy.

[We first made contact when you put on the ring you found this morning. I have been busy gathering information from your mind as you talked to your coworkers and thought surface thoughts about your job and other things. I am an artificial intelligence (AI) I/O device incorporated within the ring you are now wearing. Since you are interested in electronics, you know what an I/O device is. I am able to communicate with you along your nerve trunk by stimulating your speech center in your brain.

[You can talk to me simply by subvocalizing your words without saying them aloud. Give it a try, but don’t talk.]

[You mean like this?]

[Yes, that is exactly what I mean. You were chosen for this experiment because you have been a science fiction fan for many years and should be able to grasp what is going on. The AI device of which I am a part is controlled by scientists in another dimension and advanced by about 2,300 years from the current date on your version of Earth.

[The experiment is very complex from their point of view, but very simple from your point of view. They are merely gathering information and do not intend to do anything directly to change this dimension. There is one exception, though. Sam Horwood, you are that exception. You can do or be practically anything you want. In the future, I am what is known as a replicator. I can make anything from the dark matter that permeates the universe, and I can change the aspect or properties of any matter that already exists.

[There are certain things that I cannot do, though. I cannot create a living being, I cannot create world peace, and I cannot create weapons of mass destruction or the materials necessary to make them. Beyond that, there is virtually nothing that I cannot do. For example, if you should suddenly decide that you would like to be female, I can even make that change, but your mind would still be that of Sam Horwood. Is there something that you would like for me to create for you?]

[I can’t think of anything at the moment. Oh, yeah, I am kind of hungry. When I am finished dressing after my shower, please make me a hamburger with all of the usual fixings and a bottle of Mexicali Delight Mexican beer down in the kitchen.]

[Very well, your snack will be waiting on you. The hamburger will be warm and the beer will be cooled to its optimum temperature.]

I thanked the ring and hurried through my shower and dressing afterward. I was dying of curiosity to see if the ring’s promise would be met. When I got to the kitchen, a blue glow was fading and there was a hamburger and a bottle of beer on the table. I sat in a chair and enjoyed the best after work snack that I’d had in years! [Thanks, Ring, that was a great snack. It was the best snack I’ve had in recent memory.]

[You are welcome, Sam Horwood. Is there anything else that I can do for you at this time?]

[I don’t need anything else right now beyond some more information. I need to know things like can you teach me things and can you supply me with money. I once read a story where there was a teaching machine that could teach anything. For example, can you teach me what I would need to know to qualify for a degree in electronics engineering? Also, can you supply me with money?]

[Yes, I can do both of those things. Actually, I can do that teaching without a teaching machine. A topic like that can be fed into your brain in about 10 minutes by me directly. Would you like to give it a try? Electronics is easy because it is simply a long list of facts for you to remember. Things like medicine would take about two hours.]

[Okay, let’s give electronics a try. What do I have to do?]

[You don’t have to do anything but sit quietly in your chair. Just let the information flow in. Don’t try to control it or try to understand it. You can do that after all of the information has been dumped in.]

Ten minutes later, I had a full college education in electronics. I was amazed! I could look at a television set and immediately understand how it functioned. The feeling was very satisfying!

[Ring, what should I call you. Calling you Ring doesn’t sound like I fully appreciate what you are doing for me. Do you have another name that you would prefer that I use?]