***** Vol.3 Chap.38 Confusion and resignation *****

After leaving the Provost Office, Frank did not know what to do or where to go.

He did not want to go back to the office because he knew that all the faculty and secretaries were waiting for him to come back. He did not want to face them, not just yet, perhaps never. So, he just walked around the campus for hours and hours until it was dark.

Somehow, nothing seemed important anymore. His research work in the office was no longer a concern and so as his hundreds of emails on the computer. His stacks and stacks of correspondence on his desk waiting for his reply could now wait for a day, a month, or forever.

As he was strolling around the campus, his past years of service surfaced in his memory.

During his doctoral studies in Cairo, He investigated the use of an adaptive artificial neural network to model the development of learning and was successful in developing a network to respond and learn simple stimuli from external sources. Two decades ago, artificial neural network research was hot and many artificial intelligence researchers were proposing many learning networks.

He combined the adaptive power of an artificial neural network with his superior learning strategy and could make automatically classify patterns and learn the proper responses. For his excellence in doctoral research, He was awarded the best doctoral dissertation in the whole university. That was just the beginning of a series of lifetime awards.

After his wife’s accident in Cairo, he threw himself into his research work and finished his dissertation in record time. Upon the strong recommendation of his major advisor, he took up a faculty position at the Carniegie Institute, where he had spent the last twenty-five years of his life.

During this time, he had advanced quickly, having received his promotion to Associate Professorship in four years rather than the usual six. Then he was promoted again to Full Professorship in another three years, while many of his colleagues were never promoted even after ten to fifteen years. But throughout all this time, He kept himself busy in his research.

During his tenure at the Institute, He continued to use his enhanced artificial neural network to model the development cycle of a child. By further enhancing the learning capability of his network using the superior computing power available to him at the Institute, He could make his network do many intelligent activities that other researchers had failed to achieve.

He was active in the professional community. Because of his knowledge in chess playing, He was asked by a consortium of researchers to lead the effort to design a new generation of computer chess-playing program. For quite a long time, the competition had been between Deep Blue, the forerunner in computer chess designed by IBM and the human grand master in chess.

For a while, He enjoyed generous funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense for his artificial intelligence work. But just like everything else, good things did not stay good forever. A series of years with a huge federal budget deficit had dried up the well for long-term research with the Department of Defense. Likewise, the funding from the National Science Foundation was also severely curtailed.

As federal funding became scarce in research work dealing with artificial intelligence, He turned to applications of artificial intelligence in bioengineering. That was when he collaborated with Dr. Margaret Tomash at the Department of Genetics in cracking the human genome.

But his lifetime of accomplishments abruptly ended today.

What had gone wrong?

Replaying his last 25 years in his mind, he remembered every research proposal he had written, every student that he had supervised, every report that he had submitted, every breakthrough that he had come across. In all these, he was forthright and above reproach. He never had a paper submitted for publication that was rejected by the editorial staff of the journal.

He recalled every colleague that he had collaborated with, every research meeting that he had attended. No one had ever challenged his results, at least no one until now, and by a member of his own research team at that.

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But what had gone wrong?

For 25 years, He tried to be a gentleman and a scholar. He had always been careful in his research techniques. He was extremely diligent to explore opposing points of view. It had always been his practice not to publish anything or present anything if he felt uncomfortable about the results.

In fact, he could recall many times when some of his own graduate students got too excited about the results and he had to tone them down. In fact, the last time, it was JB who was pushing him to release the latest results on the violent tendencies as seen from the human genome. How diabolical that it was JB now accusing him of ‘pushing’ for results and making her ‘alter’ the data to agree with the present viewpoint.

I did not cook the data! If anyone did, it was JB herself!

Academic Dishonesty! He had been an honest researcher and scientist right from the start. While others sometimes fudged on the results, He had always been strict with himself and with his students. He knew that if the theory cannot explain the experimental data, then the theory needed to be changed. The theory must account for the entire set of data.

How diabolic and comical that the very thing that he had been so careful of that was the very thing he was now being accused of doing. This was a serious offense to “cook” the data. This was absolute academic dishonesty to selectively include the data that fit and exclude the data that did not fit. No respectable scientist would even think of doing anything like this.

Sexual Harassment! This was totally ridiculous. Though he was the most eligible bachelor on campus, everyone knew he was married to his work. Everyone knew he had no social life at all. His only contact was the few students and post-docs in his laboratory. In every faculty meeting or student meeting, in every encounter with friends or colleagues, He had always tried to be as professional as possible.

He had no run-ins with any of the other faculty, except for one oddball faculty who was at odds with everyone else and who should have retired years and years ago. He had been too busy with his own research work that he hardly had time to play politics. There was never an agenda to enhance himself except to excel in whatever research directions he was working on.

He found an empty bench on the campus, sat down, and stretched his arms and legs out in spread-eagle format. He let the breeze blow through him. Ah. That felt good. He closed his eyes and just wished that the breeze would carry away all his troubles and worries. He took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. Another deep breath and timed it so that he would let the air out when the breeze was blowing. That seemed to help. He continued this deep breathing exercise for a few minutes longer and gave his brain a rest.

For a long time, he tried to understand, but the more he dwelled on the events happening, the more befuddled he became. The more he tried to recall specific events, the more confused he got. The more images of faces he saw in his mind, the less sure he became. Closing his eyes, he just let it all out. It felt good just to put everything aside.

He thought of Mark’s creatures. He wondered if he was one of the good creatures or the bad ones. Was this an encounter of a good creature with a bad one? Certainly, he felt he had tried to do well in his whole life. He had never tried to do malice to anyone else. If he was one of the good creatures, then who are the bad ones? If he was one of the good ones, was the world being taken over by bad ones?

According to Mark’s results, the bad invariably overtook the good ones. Was he a casualty of an encounter between a good creature and a bad one? The thought troubled him a great deal.

No, Mark’s results cannot be right. There had to be a way out of this to temper the outcome of the encounter between the good creatures and the bad ones. He said to himself.

Seeing that he was almost motionless, a tiny squirrel climbed up the bench cautiously and yet curiously. The squirrel would move a few quick steps and stop. It would then evaluate the danger level around it. If everything is clear, it would move a few more steps and stop. When the tiny animal got closed to him, he deliberately stayed very quiet and remained motionless. Soon the tiny creature was on his lap, but its small brain was totally unaware and incapable of comprehending the sinister thought going through his mind at that moment.

Suddenly, he flung his arms around and caught the creature in his grips. The little thing was stunned and after a while, began yapping as noisily as possible when its brain finally assessed danger at hand. But it was too late; the little body was totally being crushed by a powerful force with five appendages. He brought the animal to his eye level and used the other free hand to lecture the animal about its carelessness. He told the little thing that people were not to be trusted, and that it should always be wearied of people.

The little thing continued to yap noisily. After a while, he was convinced that the creature had finally received his message and had promised to heed his warning. Gently, He let the creature down on the ground and it scurried away faster than he could blink his eye.

Yup, it got the message. He said to himself.

He looked around. The campus was deserted. Most of the students were back at the dorms, yet Professor Copenhagen’s statue was still standing guard. He looked at the statue again. He stared at the statue one more time. But there was no transformation.

Professor Copenhagen was standing tall, watching over the campus. He did not care about this little predicament that He found himself in. To him, He was just another faculty, another face, another person who had tread on this hallowed ground.