Savant Sequestration, Part 1

Part 1 - in which we are introduced to Henry Grant

By my reckoning, Henry Grant is, to date, the most intelligent human ever born. I will concede that my view is somewhat limited, as I have only been able to review individuals catalogued in history, and not those who were, through whatever means, obscured from modern records. In truth, this is precisely what Henry would have done in the days before such a census could be managed, so I imagine it is quite possible there have been others of his caliber.

What I have found most astounding about Henry is not how prolific he has has been with regards to scientific advancement and subsequent invention, but instead how these inventions so clearly demonstrate the lengths the man would go to in order to be left alone. He did, after all, invent a method of personal teleportation for the sole purpose of reaching his New York laboratory without anyone taking notice of his passage.

He has told me many times of the day he found a vagrant sleeping in his "office." At this time, he was still working mostly alone and had built a laboratory hidden away in the tunnels beneath New York City. During those earlier days, he had to travel through those tunnels physically to reach his lab, and though he had already created wondrous inventions to make this trip safer and easier, those wayward souls who lived in the tunnels took notice of his passage. A particularly resourceful vagrant took note of Henry's entry processes and used this knowledge to bypass the admittedly primitive security. Mercifully, Henry arrived before the intruder could begin to tamper with any of the equipment.

This prompted a number of advances. First, Henry perfected genetic identification and force field technology, to prevent another such intrusion. For most people, this would clearly be plenty of precaution, but, as Henry has so often told me and others, "I can't work with all these people around." I would inquire as to how this disturbed his work, as the people clearly were no longer in his presence, but he insisted that, at any moment, they could be looking in his direction, trying to see him through the walls. "When they think about me like that, it interferes with my concentration."

At the time of this intrusion, Henry had been working on his teleportation theories anyway, but up until then had seen no particular reason to move it from theoretical to practical research. (I shudder to think what might never have been accomplished had there not been homeless people in New York City.) But he now felt a need to relocate to someplace with fewer intrusions. After he had decided on the perfect location - well, the first of many such, as he has always been able to find a distraction regardless of how remote the location was - He came to realize that he was not suited to the task of its construction. With this in mind, he began the two-month-long process of designing, building, and perfecting robotic assistants. (He claims that he took so long because of the eyes of the vagrants.) With his first three assistants created, including the now-famous Martin, he completed his teleportation research quickly and set them to building his Antarctic laboratory.

Of course, he didn't stay on Antarctica for long. Somehow, he found a way to find distractions there to irritate him enough to relocate again. He could always find unsatisfactory disturbances no matter how remote the laboratory, be it the bottom of the ocean ("the fish keep looking at me"), the moon ("people keep looking at me"), the asteroid belt ("what was that noise"), and even Jupiter ("what was that noise").

I'm telling you this brief story to introduce you to one of the central personality quirks that define not only Henry Grant, but in many ways the extraordinary technological development of our modern age: the need to not be bothered. Almost every wondrous invention he ever created was for the purpose of being left alone, at least until he met Abigail.

But that is a story for another day.