Title: In the Beginning…
Author: sockie1000
Summary: Numbers had brought them together. Otherwise, Harold and Nathan probably never would have become friends. ** Pre-series Harold and Nathan. Friendship, not slash. **
Warning: Character death. You should already know who.
Author's notes: Thanks, as always, to my two wonderful betas: Rogue Tomato, who loves both the show and trying to figure out what happened as much as I do; and Cokie316, who had seen the show once or twice but was sweet enough to beta anyway. (but she's watching it now… :evilgrin: )
This story is short- 10k words and six chapters. I'll post every other day (roughly) so we will be finished before the end of the month. I hope that works for everyone. :D
And for those of you on alert who kept getting emails with broken links to this story… sorry about that. Apparently, it is a well-known glitch on this site that sometimes stories just don't show up. So, you just have to wait days or weeks to see if they return from the abyss or repost and try again. I'm not very patient, so you know which one I did. So, I apologize for junking up your emails. Believe me, I was just as frustrated about it as you.
Chapter 1
Numbers had brought them together.
Otherwise, Harold and Nathan probably never would have become friends.
It was fortuitous that MIT used a random number generator to match up roommates, placing both of them in room 316 of Bexley Hall. Harold still remembered the first time they met, when Nathan burst into the room, dropped his red duffle bag on the floor, and stuck out his hand. "Nathan Ingram," he said, with an easy manner and a wide grin to match.
Harold had never met anyone quite like Nathan. Harold had grown up quietly in New England, the last son of Frances and Stanley Finch, two professors at a prominent liberal arts university. Harold never bonded with his older brothers, who liked to hide his glasses, push him in the pool, and call him a baby, among other things. He was different from the other kids his age as well, even the ones in his prestigious private school. While they liked to play sports, Harold preferred to remain indoors, lost in a book. When he became a teenager, the other guys liked to talk about girls and their Saturday night conquests. Harold was somewhat terrified of speaking to the opposite sex and most of his Saturday nights consisted of attending his parents' dinner parties, where the fellow professors and guests would pass the evening discussing classic literature, often speaking in the author's native language. They hardly said a word to the shy boy sitting at the end of the dining room table.
So when Nathan extended his hand in friendship that August day, Harold couldn't help but be drawn to the gregarious Texan.
Despite their "odd couple" appearance, the two quickly became close friends. Nathan encouraged Harold to get his nose out of books and experience life while Harold provided a calm, steady sounding board for Nathan to share his thoughts and dreams.
And Nathan had big dreams. To start a company. To get rich. And maybe, one day, to save the world.
Every hero needs a faithful sidekick and Harold was up for the task. One week after graduating in 1980, they founded IFT, Inc. in a small apartment in Queens. They worked out an easy arrangement that suited them both; Nathan would be the face of the company, providing the voice and the charm, and Harold would be the brains, providing the intelligence and skill.
The first few months were lean, but they made it, courtesy of Harold's modest trust fund and countless dinners of ramen noodles. But then their fortunes began to improve. Nathan was able to take Harold's schematics and initial designs and parlay them into an impressive amount of investment funding from venture capitalists. Once they sold their first product nine months later, a sophisticated software program, IFT was on the map as a major up-and-coming player in the quickly evolving computer world.
They celebrated the sale with a fly-fishing trip to Wyoming. Naturally, Finch didn't want to go, preferring to stay home in New York and work instead.
"You're going to go blind, you know, staring at that computer all day," Nathan told him.
"That's why I have glasses," Harold replied, still clicking away on his computer at a dizzying pace. "It helps with the eye strain."
Nathan rolled his eyes. "We can talk strategy while we're standing in the river, if that makes you feel better."
Two days later, they left for Casper. And much to Harold's surprise, he enjoyed himself. So much, in fact, that when Nathan handed his camera to one of the other fishermen on the third day, asking him to take their picture, Harold genuinely smiled.
"So, we finally found a sport you enjoy," Nathan commented, smiling as he drew back his line and cast into the North Platte River.
"Actually, this is the second sport I enjoy," Harold countered as he patiently drew his line in. "I already liked chess."
Nathan snorted. "Chess is not a sport. It's a darn fine way to fall asleep."
It wasn't until after they returned to New York that Harold realized they had never once discussed strategy.
When the pictures were developed, Nathan framed the photo of the two of them taken by the fisherman and presented it to Harold. "To remind you what life's really about," Nathan said. Harold accepted the gift with a smile and placed it on his desk, next to his computer monitor. It remained there for years.
Time passed and they continued to work hard, building IFT into a technological powerhouse. But Nathan continued to insist they also take some time off to play. For Nathan, that included falling in love and getting married. For Harold, that included season tickets to the New York Philharmonic.
Through highs and lows- the birth of Nathan's son, the death of Harold's parents, Nathan's divorce- they remained best friends.
And Harold considered himself very lucky that numbers brought them together.
He never dreamed that one day numbers would also tear them apart.
*POI*
2005
"You're sure it was Weeks?" Nathan asked as he rose from his chair, referring to the Deputy Director of the CIA and supervisor for the machine project. The director had apparently been trying to tunnel into the machine for weeks, using the NSA data feed.
Harold shut the lid of the laptop computer. "The machine told me," he replied simply, confident in both the machine and his programming skills which created it. He stood and walked towards the elevator. "It has an instinct for self-preservation."
"You talk about that thing like it's alive," Nathan pointed out, gesturing towards the laptop as he walked behind Finch.
"Shhhh, it can hear you." Finch joked.
Harold thought it was less of a joke when he sat down at his computer the next morning, hot tea in hand, ready to start another day. After logging in, using a random alphanumeric password, complete with upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and even an ampersand and asterisk thrown in for good measure, he was greeted with the following message:
possible threat detected. Nathan C. Ingram
Finch sat at his desk, staring at the screen in shock for a few minutes. Then a slow smile crept across his face.
He couldn't believe it actually worked. He knew the machine could find potential threats by combing through hard data, such as receipts, cell phone calls, and text messages. And the apprehension of Kurtzweil just that week proved the machine was able to find the thinnest threads linking people to potential terrorism.
But what the machine had accomplished now, by alerting him to Nathan being a potential threat… well, that was something different entirely.
Because Nathan hadn't said anything "wrong". He hadn't threatened anyone, hadn't purchased a gun, and hadn't even been talking about a person.
But he had been talking about the machine. And while Harold was kidding when he told Nathan the machine could hear him, he wasn't joking about its instinct for self-preservation… an instinct he had programmed in. And until that moment, Finch wasn't sure it would work.
But the proof was sitting right in front of his face, courtesy of a computer screen.
The machine was cognizant. Aware. And able to make inferences.
Finch had created artificial intelligence, the likes of which the world had never seen.
And if he had his way, it never would.
Harold looked at the screen for a little longer, savoring the victory.
Then he deleted the message and began to vigorously reinforce the firewall.
*POI*
2010
"What did he say?"
Nathan sighed and set his briefcase down on a leather chair in his office at the deserted IFT Headquarters in Manhattan. "Can I at least take my coat off before you bombard me with questions, Harold?"
"Of course," Finch nodded, with a bob of his head. He pressed his lips together tightly to avoid saying anything more while Nathan shrugged out of his overcoat.
"I think your lips are turning blue," Nathan said with another sigh. He walked around to his desk, stopping by a credenza on the way. He opened up the bottom right door and removed a bottle of scotch, along with a crystal tumbler, which he held up. "Care for one?" he asked.
Harold shook his head, disappointment evident on his face. "That bad?"
Ingram nodded as he poured himself a drink, not even bothering to recap the bottle. He took a sip, savoring the burn on the way down. "That bad," he confirmed.
Harold stood completely still for a moment, his brows knitted together in concern. "He just… didn't care?"
Nathan took another sip before looking at Harold. "I believe his exact words were, 'Mr. Ingram, these numbers are insignificant'."
Harold just stood there, shocked. It took him a minute to find his voice. "But they're not just numbers. They're people, U. S. citizens. Isn't he supposed to be protecting them?"
"Apparently, he's only interested in protecting them against terrorists," Nathan said, bitterly. "What we do amongst ourselves isn't important to him."
It was Harold's turn to sigh. He really shouldn't be surprised- it had been a long shot to begin with. But since Weeks was the only person who knew about the machine, other than the NSA liaison, Alicia Corwin, their options were limited.
Ingram had already tried to reason with Alicia to no avail. "I can't," she said, shaking her head, looking genuinely sorry. "Weeks is very territorial. He wouldn't want this information shared with other agencies, even if it would save lives. If I passed this info along to the FBI or police and Weeks found out…" She sighed. "At best I'd be out of a job. And at worst, I'd be dead. I'm sorry, but my hands are tied. As regrettable as it is, I suggest you just forget about it."
But they couldn't.
At first, there were just a few numbers, ones belonging to random citizens who were not considered a threat to national security. Instead of their numbers being sent to the CIA, they were dumped onto a computer file on Harold's hard drive. Ingram thought they might actually be anomalies, created by some random glitch in the system, but Finch was adamant the numbers were meaningful.
He began to meticulously research the numbers, trying to find out why the machine had flagged them. It took a few weeks, but then a pattern began to emerge. One number belonged to a man who killed his wife's lover four days after his number appeared; another to a woman who was mysteriously poisoned less than 12 hours after her number came up. And the pattern continued- future felons and victims predicted with alarming accuracy.
Harold shared his findings with Nathan in his office one afternoon, eleven weeks after the machine spit out the first number. By that time, the list of numbers had grown to 27, representing 25 crimes and 18 deaths. Only two people had either changed their minds or not yet carried through with their intentions.
And the creators of the machine were faced with a choice- act on the information or do nothing.
It wasn't a hard decision, especially for Nathan. He still wanted to save the world and those opportunities did not come around often for tech company executives, even for those who freelanced for the DOD.
"I guess it's for the best," Nathan said, interrupting Finch's musing. "After all," he added with a wan smile, "if Weeks had an excuse to snoop around in the private lives of civilians, the only safe places to have a conversation would be in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa or an outhouse in the backwoods of Montana."
"I wouldn't put him past having ears in the outhouse," Harold replied dryly, before returning Nathan's thin smile.
Nathan chuckled grimly then looked down, studying the little whiskey that remained in his tumbler, noticing how smoothly it swirled and how the light glinted off the crystal facets as he rotated the glass in his hand. "I guess that's it then," he said slowly. "We don't have any other choice." He brought the tumbler up to his lips and paused, before quickly knocking back the rest of his drink. He set the glass down and looked straight at Harold.
"We're going to have to do this ourselves."
To be continued…
