Professor Yao arrived punctually at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. It was a hotel that, despite the proliferation of intelligent buildings with elaborate ecosystems over the last few decades, had managed to cling to its ageing Art Deco charm. The Waldorf Astoria was a landmark historical building, kept that way by a committee of influential members of the establishment to protect the rapidly disappearing remnants of the old New York city. The digerati, cognoscenti, financiers, politicos, academics, technocrats and the wealthy had descended on this archaic patch to attend the World Technology Forum, the biggest meeting of fame, money and minds in the modern world.

It was raining heavily outside and the clouds had turned to heavy gray molasses shifting slowly across a featureless sky. Now safely inside the ostentatious hotel, the diminutive professor found himself weaving his way between the sharp Saville Row suits and international designer outfits of high society. He felt like a carp out of water, trying to free itself from a tangle of weeds. He looked and felt out of place. He was a small balding man in a cheap gray Guangdong-manufactured polyester-mix suit who still couldn’t get over the excitement of what had just happened in his native China.

Outside, a large section of Park Avenue and its adjoining streets had been cordoned off, droplets of rain cascading off the shiny metal barricades and the plastic ribbons. There were armed NYPD cops, carrying an assortment of state-of-the-art crowd-dispersion weaponry, for as far as the eye could see. Some of the weapons had muzzles large enough for a full grown man to climb into. A small cluster of demonstrators stood way back from the barriers and the cops, waving banners and chanting slogans and generally not looking too confident about being able to get their messages across. If they’d had any hopes of disrupting the forum, those hopes had been quickly put in check. The demonstrators eyed the cops suspiciously.

The professor’s taxi, a hulking black vehicle of the like he had never seen before, had dropped him off two blocks down the road. He had been forced to walk the rest of the way, rain water coalescing on his suit. He had had some trouble explaining to a couple of NYPD officers on bulky chrome and fiberglass electric motorbikes that he was an invited guest to the forum. They had scrutinized his smartcard, eying his suit suspiciously. One of the cops had swiped the smartcard on a wireless reader on his wrist and waited for the system to query a remote database and come back with a result. They had looked like they didn’t expect him to be authenticated.

Professor Yao had started to sweat in his polyester suit, or was it the rain slowly oozing through the synthetic weave, and his round face and intelligent eyes had began to show some concern. Mentally, he could trace the database query snaking through the system and knew every step the computers where taking to verify his identity, down to the last memory routine. The rain was a dark omen, reminding him of the dog that had spent all night howling outside his Beijing hutong two nights earlier.

Then he’d seen his photo flicker on the officer’s wrist and waited patiently as the cops satisfied themselves that he was indeed the authenticated entity. He disliked the probing and the body searching but was relieved when the black policeman said to the oriental-looking one, that he was clean. Of course he was clean, who the hell did they think they where questioning his personal hygiene? And the oriental-looking one could have shown some respect by addressing him in Chinese, but these Americans were all the same. They had no respect for their elders.

Then Professor Yao had walked up Park Avenue towards the Waldorf Astoria, which he’d heard from his more internationally-minded colleagues at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, was a very old hotel. The big electrics whizzing past made him feel even more out of place. Long limousines snaked up the road, their boomerang antennas cutting arcs in the air. Among the ant line of vehicles had been cars the likes of which the professor had never seen before. They were ostentatious displays of wealth. There were even a few hybrids running on diesel, mushrooms of dark gray emissions blowing out of their exhausts.

Professor Yao found himself in the grand lobby of the Waldorf, ferried briskly by a sea of bodies past a huge ornate clock sitting smack bang in the middle. Were those the heads of past American presidents on the base of the clock? Clocks were bad omens and to have them so linked to dead American leaders was only tempting fate. He adjusted his bifocals, which were perched precariously on the blunt edge of his largish but friendly-looking nose. His bushy black eyebrows furrowed into arches and his forehead formed a knot as he fumbled in his jacket pocket for the itinerary.

Smart airborne micro dirigibles glided up in the ceilings above the crowds intermittently cycling through corporate sponsor logos. Computerized female voices announced the various rooms where the talks were being held. He thought he heard his name over the din of chatter and social networking. Professor Yao recognized a few faces from the international magazines, corporate CEOs, prize-winning academics, the celebrity owners of several famous software companies and an anemic-looking model he’d seen on the billboards that lined the streets of Beijing.There were quite a few fashion models at the forum, extremely thin specimens with egos as large as those enhanced chests that they all seemed to have. Humans where getting ridiculous in their need for self-expression. Maybe the knowledge he was here to impart would make everyone take a hard look at themselves and the values they held dear.

Today was the day that the world would realize that he, Professor Yao Guo Chuen, had achieved what billions of dollars and generations of America’s best brains had failed to achieve. Professor Yao was one of the world’s pre-eminent authorities on neural networks and artificial intelligence, but the world was not yet aware of this fact. He was literally minutes away from being propelled to the top of his field internationally.

While his colleagues at Tsinghua University had gained international renown with lucrative publishing contracts and tenures at the world’s best universities and research institutions, Professor Yao had stayed at home, in his modest house in one of the last surviving hutongs in Beijing, working for his country. He received a grant from a department of the People’s Liberation Army as well as project funding and access to some of the most advanced military computers for the purpose of research into AI. He had eschewed the lucrative corporate directorships and the consulting and advisory opportunities that had come his way over the years, preferring to stay away from such distractions.

Professor Yao’s name was not to be found in any international scientific journals but in classified research reports used by leading military think tanks in New China. He was the principal architect of New China’s cyberspace, called the Wang, and the new system that, though as yet unofficial, had seen New China quietly take the lead in emerging information technologies. But even that was nothing in comparison with his latest breakthrough.

He was taking a big risk by being here, but the AI had convinced him, and he couldn’t predict what fate awaited him on his return to New China. It had occurred to him that the AI may have had the ulterior motive of taking him out of the picture but he had quickly dismissed the idea as ludicrous. Nevertheless, he had taken precautions and he was determined to make his announcement to the international community here in New York, before handing over the product of his research to the People’s Liberation Army.

That way he would be leveling the playing field of the future while giving New China just a small advantage. He would give the world’s artificial intelligence community enough information to make the breakthrough on their own, after New China had secured all international patents. This was for the good of all humanity. He would single-handedly sound the trumpet for a paradigm shift in human development and achievement. The singularity was on the verge of shifting into high gear and propelling the human race into a bold new era of intelligence.

Professor Yao was a patriot who loved New China in a way that was difficult for a non-Chinese to understand. Yet, to have such knowledge in the hands of one country alone was dangerous. To have it in the hands of one man alone was unspeakable. Professor Yao knew that at this very moment his life was in danger. The major-general in Beijing whose secret funding resulted in the breakthrough probably already knew he was gone, although it would be difficult for him to trace him to the World Technology Forum. There were a few Chinese delegates at the forum, according to the agenda, but Professor Yao doubted any would recognize him and he was relieved to see that most of them were from academia or the lower rungs of the military research apparatus. However, every time he saw an oriental face his heartbeat quickened.

Professor Yao made his way towards a gleaming bank of elevators, mopping his forehead frantically with a small red handkerchief. According to the itinerary, his talk was at the hotel’s famed Starlight Roof on the eighteenth floor. His friend Dr. James Joplin, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, had kept his promise to secure him the space at short notice. Not that he had met Joplin personally, but he had seen his pictures in the international magazines and exchanged ideas via hundreds of e-mails. Dr. Joplin had made him several offers to join him at MIT, but the humble professor had politely declined.

A huge plasma screen above the escalator confirmed his itinerary. He had asked for his name to not be mentioned in the pre-event literature.

Venue: The Starlight Roof

Speaker: Professor Yao Guo Chuen, Head of the Artificial Intelligence and Nanotechnology Centre, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Topic: Quantum Computing: a breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence

Time: 2.30PM-3.30PM

A wave of pride welled up in him, which he managed to suppress quickly. He was not a proud man, but he was human and the occasional feeling of pride, quickly held back and smothered with humility, was not beyond him. Professor Yao glanced at his watch – thirty minutes to go. He shouldn’t have done that. Almost immediately his heart started hammering away at his chest like a pneumatic drill. The pounding in his ears was so loud that he thought the people around him could hear it. If only his wife was still alive to help calm him down.

The elevator doors hissed open and a crowd of people streamed out, many of them still wearing the earphones of the complementary real-time translation systems and clutching itineraries. All around the sound of various conversations and computerized voices punctured with elevator music. There was excitement in the air, which rubbed off on the professor, settling him a little. Miraculously, he was alone in the elevator as it made its way up to the eighteenth floor.

Professor Yao knew that the topic of his research would attract all the right people. He had deliberately come up with a title that would bring in the best minds in both Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing. Nanotechnology had been slow meeting expectations and it was only recently that it had started to bear fruit after decades of research, trillions of dollars and so-called “breakthroughs”. The idea that it would play an important part in the foreseeable future of artificial intelligence had started to lose resonance. Many scientists, especially those who were not interested in its medical applications, had already given up on the field as a waste of time. You could get atoms and molecules to behave like miniature machines or gears but their applications where pretty limited. They tended to be one-trick ponies.

The professor exited the elevator into a room so opulently decorated that he couldn’t help being impressed. You had to hand it to the Americans. They were masters of excess. Everything from the majestic chandelier to the engraved marble rotunda and the gilded ceiling spoke of another era. Already, half of the tasseled velvet seats were occupied, suggesting that it was going to be a packed auditorium. He noticed that the majority of the people quietly reading their itineraries and peering into their complementary video screens were bespectacled gray hairs like him. But Dr. James Joplin was nowhere to be seen. He’d said he’d be in the Starlight Room half an hour early so that they could have a quick chat before Professor Yao’s talk.

Nevertheless, another wave of Chinese pride, this one slightly larger than the last, welled up in Professor Yao, leaving a burning sensation on his cheeks. He adjusted his glasses, which once again had traveled to the end of his nose, and walked towards the stage. As he went by, a few members of the audience looked up at him and Professor Yao thought he saw shadows of false recognition cross their faces. One or two nodded or raised their hands and Professor Yao nodded back, slightly embarrassed at the attention. He twirled the thick jade ring on his finger, noticing for the first time that the viridian hue of the jade had become much paler. Or was it the effect of the lighting?

He almost tripped over one of several small robots gliding through the aisles offering little shots of Espresso coffee and finger-sized sandwiches. A rumble deep within his bowels reminded Professor Yao that he hadn’t eaten in eight hours. There’d been no time to pop down to Chinatown for a quick bite and the meal served on the plane had been inedible. Professor Yao was not a big fan of Western cuisine, which didn’t deliver the same sated feeling that one got from authentic Chinese food. He had quickly checked into his hotel, refreshed himself and grabbed a taxi to the Waldorf.

“Testing, testing, testing. One, two, three ...” went a female voice on the audio system. Professor Yao looked towards the stage to see a well-presented young woman in a tight-fitting gray suit on the podium. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-one years old. The sound of static filled the air and music began to blast from different loudspeakers. The sound shifted like storm clouds from one side of the room to another as the technicians tested the audio. The girl turned towards Professor Yao, flaming red hair crowned TV presenter looks, and a flicker of recognition crossed her face. She walked purposefully towards him and Professor Yao suddenly felt embarrassed. A cloud of expensive perfume enveloped the professor.

“Hi Professor Yao, I was really worried you wouldn’t make it,” the girl said with genuine concern. “I am Wendy Bruckheimer with the World Technology Forum. I will be taking care of you today.” She flashed a smile, revealing perfectly even teeth.

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Bruckheimer. I must apologize for my tardiness,” the professor said haltingly, proud that his rusty English was holding up nicely with the attractive young woman.

“That’s OK. I expect you’ve heard about Dr. Joplin though?” she asked, looking at him intensely. Professor Yao felt the tempo of his heartbeat rise sharply. He fixed the Bruckheimer woman with a concerned look.

“No. I haven’t. What happened?” A crescendo of alarm had crept into Professor Yao’s voice.

“Well, we left a message at your hotel. You see, Professor Yao, Dr. Joplin is dead.”