That evening, as Albert was getting ready to leave for home, his phone chimed.  He looked at it and saw that it was Walter who, not waiting for Albert to call him, had decided to ensure the conversation and so had called Albert.

Slightly irritated, Albert accepted the call, not waiting for Walter to speak, and he said, “Hey, Walter, I’m just getting my things together to head out.  Let me call you from the car.  I can never seem to get the Bluetooth thing to connect right if I try to do it while I’m already talking to someone.”

In his turn, Walter also did not provide any pleasantries.  He simply said, “How long do you think it’ll be?”

This irritated Albert a bit more.  He could call Walter on his own time, when he wanted to call, and it was awfully presumptuous of the man to ask for time parameters.  Still, as he had reminded himself before, Walter had done him some real favors.  After a breath, he said, “Probably about five to ten minutes.”

He suspected Walter was bristling with impatience, but the only reply was, “Okay.  Talk to you then.”

Albert disconnected the call, then he sighed and finished gathering his things before walking out to his car, waving at a few coworkers as he passed them.  No one had pestered him about his appearance that day, and he thought that fewer people had complimented him than on the previous days, so he wondered if Darren had already spread the word that his was a medical situation—albeit a fictional one—and that maybe they shouldn’t bring it up with him too much.

He took his time getting to his car and then putting his bag down in the passenger seat, asserting his own control over when he called Walter, at least a little bit.  It felt petty, but it gave him a moment or two to try to clear his head.  He started the car and pulled out, getting all the way to the exit onto the main road before he dialed Walter back.

The phone rang only once before Walter picked it up, saying, “Hey, Albert, thanks for calling back.  So, what’s going on?”

Albert took a breath.  He hadn’t really mentally rehearsed what he was going to say, but he had tried at least roughly to plan out the general tack he would take.  He forced himself to give a good-natured chuckle and said, “Hey, Walter.  Good to talk to you, too.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Walter responded, clearly not worried about polite niceties, but also clearly recognizing Albert’s mild sarcasm.  The two had known each other for a long time, so Albert felt it wasn’t really a problem if they didn’t do a lot of song and dance to get into their conversation.  In fact, over the several days they’d been interacting again, Albert felt they had slipped back almost into their mutual habits from when they knew each other in college.

“Seriously,” Walter went on, “what’s going on with the shampoo.  Your texts didn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

“Yes, well…I can believe that,” Albert said.  “It was hard to know how to put it.”

“How to put what?” Walter asked.  Albert could hear the tension in his voice; he sounded almost afraid, but that wasn’t quite the right term.

“Okay, well…” Albert began, almost pleased that he hadn’t rehearsed what he was going to say, since it would seem more natural this way, “…this morning, when I went to look at the cup…I mean, I had set up another cup with just a drop of the shampoo from the other cup, and I put my old cell phone in it.  That was a bit of a wrench, I can tell you, but once it was wet, there wasn’t any turning back, so…”

“Okay,” Walter interrupted.  “So, this morning when you went to look at the cup…what?  What happened?”

“Well…it was the darndest thing,” Albert told him, allowing the turns and lane changes of driving to punctuate his speech so that he could gather his words better.  “The cup was…the shampoo had only eaten, like, a little more than half of the smartphone, if ‘eaten’ is the right word.  It cut it off cleanly, too, like someone had used a band saw on it or something.  And the water hadn’t…well, it hadn’t completely been made into shampoo, either.  It was half shampoo, half water, in a clean layer in the middle, like a tequila sunrise or something.”

“What?”  Walter said, sounding incredulous and yet clearly not disbelieving Albert.  Albert was glad Walter seemed not to have the slightest notion that the shampoo might have acted in response to a question or a request, and he did not intend to bring it up if he could avoid it.

“Yep,” Albert said.  “The phone and the liquids were sliced level, like it had been done with one of those old paper cutters.”

“I don’t get it,” Walter said, apparently not yet settling on asking what this would have to do with there being a “problem” of some kind.  “Why would it do something like that?”

“Well…” Albert said, “…it’s…that’s not quite the most surprising thing.”

“What do you mean?” Walter asked.  “What is the most surprising thing?”

Albert took a deep breath in, then said, “Hang on, I’ve got to make a turn.”  This was true, as far as it went.  He had come to a place where he was in a signal controlled left-turn lane, and traffic was busy, so the line for the light was relatively long.  He preferred not to miss the chance and have to wait for the next signal, so he was focused relatively intently on the process of turning as the light had just changed.  He could have done it while talking, but he didn’t mind putting off what he was going to say for at least a second, though he felt like a bit of a coward.

After the turn, finally, Albert said, “Okay, well…when I looked at the cup, after I was distracted by the level of the shampoo and the phone, I saw…I saw that there were words written on the inside of the cup, done so I could read them.”

The pause that followed felt quite long to Albert, though it was probably only a second or two.  Walter finally just said, “What?”

“There were words,” Albert repeated.  “They were written on the inside surface of the cup, but they had been written in reverse, I guess, so I could read them when just looking at the cup.”

After another, slightly briefer, pause, Walter said, “What the…I don’t understand what you mean.  What…what do you mean there were words?  You mean, like…real words?  English words?”

“Yep,” Albert replied.  “Plain, clear English, written in a type-style font.  I mean, they could’ve been printed by a laser printer, they were so neat.”

“I don’t…I don’t understand,” Walter said.  “Was it a cup that should’ve had words on it?  Like one of those trick coffee mugs that shows a picture when it gets hot?”

“No, no,” Albert  told him.  “It was a plastic, disposable cup, from a pack of them I bought at the store, for when I don’t want to have to clean dishes after drinking something.”

Walter paused yet again, the asked, “Well…what did they say?  I’m guessing it wasn’t, ‘Help, I’m trapped in a plastic cup factory’ or something like that.”

Albert laughed nervously, caught slightly off-guard by Walter’s joke.  “No,” he said, “it was nothing like that.”

“I didn’t really think it was,” Walter said, and he sounded slightly more impatient and worried.  “So, what did they say?  Where did they come from?”

“Well, I think it’s pretty obvious where they came from,” Albert said.  “The…well, the V-42 wrote them.”  He waited for Walter to object, but Walter said nothing, waiting in silence.  Albert took a tense breath, then went on, “Anyway, they said…they said, ‘we only want to work for you, Albert’.”

He had left off the first part about how they had specifically singled out Walter, thinking it would be too insulting and perhaps disheartening.  He waited for his friend’s response, but Walter just said, “Huh?”

Albert repeated, “It said, ‘we only want to work for you, Albert’.”

“But what does that mean?” Walter asked.  “How could…what does it mean, it only wants to work for you?  How…how could it even know if it was working for you or for someone else, or what?”

“I don’t know,” Albert said, though he was surprised Walter was puzzled.

“I mean…I don’t understand,” Walter went on.  “I don’t…you mean, it actually not only seems to…to know who you are, but it can write, in English?  Did it spell your name right?”

“Sure,” Albert replied, finding that question odd.  “Why wouldn’t it?  I mean, it’s not exactly a hard name to spell, is it?”

“Albert,” Walter said, “you’re missing the point.  A couple of them.  How could this…this shampoo even know how to print or type in English, let alone to spell?  And more to the point, how did it know who you are?  I’m guessing you didn’t…introduce yourself to it or something, did you?”

Albert had to think carefully about what Walter was saying.  Bizarre images of him presenting himself to his shampoo and even bowing as he proclaimed his identity flitted through his head.  “No,” he replied, chuckling again.  “No, I don’t make a habit of introducing myself to my shampoo.  Even shampoo like this.”

“Of course not,” Walter said.  “I mean, do you go around your house talking about who you are and what your name is?”

This made Albert feel slightly awkward, since he had at least spoken aloud to the shampoo once.  Otherwise, though, he didn’t think he tended to speak at all when he was by himself at home.  “No,” he said.  “I don’t.”

“So, how could this stuff even know who it was talking to?” Walter asked, seeming to have taken in fully the fact that it had communicated with its “owner” in fairly clear terms.  “How does it know you?  I mean, sure, let’s imagine it could recognize your body, since you use it to wash your hair and everything, but…it knows your name?”

“I guess so,” Albert said.

“How?” Walter asked.  “How could it know your name?”

Albert had to admit this was a puzzle, since he didn’t know when he would have spoken his name out loud in the presence of his shampoo.  Grasping at straws a bit, he said, “Maybe it…decoded the information in the phone or something.  You know, while it was…digesting it?”

“I don’t…that’s crazy,” Walter said.  “Do you really think that, even if it could, it would go the trouble of…of reading your phone’s storage, decoding the programs and reading ASCII characters, or whatever they use in cell phones nowadays?  That seems ridiculous.”

“Sure,” Albert said.  “But is that any more ridiculous than the fact that it’s making me look and feel healthier?  And younger?”

“Well…yeah, it is,” Walter replied.  “I mean, it seems like it was made to make whoever used it get healthier, or younger, or whatever.  In order to decode and store information from a smartphone it was using to make more of itself, it’d have to do that on purpose.  It’d have to plan to do that.”

Albert didn’t honestly think this seemed beyond the technology of what they were describing, though he would have had to admit that it was mind-boggling.  Still, Walter was right—it would have needed to occur to the stuff to read the data on his smartphone, and then to figure out what the data meant, and who was the owner of the phone among all that info.

Then, another thought occurred to him.   “Well…I did bring the bottle with me to the restaurant, when I first told you about it, right?” he said.

Walter sighed, and he sounded almost exasperated.  “Are you trying to tell me you imagine this stuff could hear us talking and knew which one of us was which?”

That seemed neither more nor less absurd to Albert than the idea of reading a smartphone, but he felt more convinced that it was a possibility, since his experience with the stuff from the previous night and that morning made it clear that it could understand speech.  Either that, or it could directly decode his thought, but that seemed even more astonishing to consider than either of the other two alternatives.

“Why not?” he asked.  “I mean, it had to figure it out somehow.  Unless you think I’m making it up.”

“No, I don’t think you’re making it up,” Walter said, his tone making it clear that he was speaking the plain truth.  “If you were making it up, you’d make up something a lot more believable.  I’m just…this goes way beyond anything I would have thought, even after seeing how the stuff has helped you and what it did when I was trying to analyze it.”

Albert felt tempted to tell Walter that he had no idea how much it had helped him.  He was sure that he looked significantly healthier and younger than he had when he had seen Walter in the restaurant.

He sighed, not thinking they were likely to get much further in that line of inquiry.  Deciding to push things forward, he asked, “What do you think about what it said?  Or, what it wrote, I guess.”

Walter had clearly been lost in thought, because it took him a moment to say, “What do you mean?  What about what it said?”

“Well, I mean…it sounds like it’s not going to want to work on things like…like a celebrity spa or something, that idea you had,” Albert said.  He tried to make himself sound at least mildly disappointed and worried, and probably the fact that he was anxious about having to refuse his friend made it a bit more convincing than it might have otherwise been.

“Not necessarily,” Walter said, though his tone wasn’t as confident it could have been.  “I mean, probably it doesn’t know anything about that idea…assuming it knows anything at all.  I mean, Christ, as far as I know, it’s just got some pre-programmed tendency to send a message to the person who owns it, or something.  Maybe it’s like a…a cool marketing gimmick or something.  Like, when it figures out who the person is who owns the bottle, it sends them a message.”

“What, in a plastic cup?” Albert responded.  “That doesn’t make sense.  It wouldn’t ever…the manufacturer wouldn’t think it was ever going to be in a plastic cup most of the time.”

“Okay, yeah, good point,” Walter admitted.  Then, almost as soon as he finished that sentence, he said, “Oh, hey, maybe that’s what’s going on.  Maybe once someone starts…I don’t know, reproducing it, like you’ve been, it recognizes that and is programmed to leave a message for the person.  To try to make sure they aren’t gonna sell it or something, and ruin the market for the real manufacturer.”

Walter sounded like he was trying to sound confident, but especially at the end, his voice wavered a bit.  Albert said, “If it could be programmed to send a message to someone to tell them not to sell it, wouldn’t it make sense just to…to make it not able to do that?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Walter said.  “Although, we’re talking about this as if it’s, like, something made by some company.  But, especially now, now that you’re telling me this, I can’t believe this stuff was ever made on this planet, at this time.  I mean, frankly, I wouldn’t expect something like this to be possible even in a century.”

“Well, it came from somewhere,” Albert pointed out.  “And I don’t mean just the convenience store.”

“No, I get it,” Walter said.  “I know what you mean.  But…I mean, really, it can’t be from someone on the planet right now.  If anyone on Earth had anything close to this level of technology, they wouldn’t be making it into shampoo.  They’d’ve taken over the world already, or they’d already be running things behind the scenes.  But I don’t think they’d be putting bottles of nano-tech shampoo in convenience stores.”

“Who knows what someone like that would do?” Albert asked, though he had to admit that he thought Walter was probably right.  If an individual or government on Earth had this kind of scientific ability, they would surely have used it in other ways.  It was hard to imagine even the most benevolent business or government on Earth having such stuff and choosing to release it as shampoo rather than, for instance, using it as a weapon, or to build and repair infrastructure, to spy on enemies, and so on.

“Well, I can’t say I know,” Walter said, meanwhile.  “But I’d be happy to bet everything I own against it.  I mean, it wouldn’t make sense.  Actually, the time travel thing is starting to seem to make more sense to me.  What if it really was sent from the future, maybe even from a future you?  That would make more sense of it just…just being there in the convenience store, right when you were going there to get shampoo, which isn’t where you usually get it, like you said.  And if it was sent by you, that would explain why it would say it wants to work for you.”

There was a mixture of enthusiasm and uncertainty in Walter’s voice, and it was difficult to tell just how much he believed what he was saying.  Albert, on the other hand, while admitting that it was a slightly more plausible idea than the modern business or government angle, still found it dubious.  For one thing, it would force him to believe in the possibility of time travel, which was a heavy lift.  It was one thing to imagine extremely advanced nanotechnology—that was merely an extension of things people were working on, anyway.  For time travel to happen, that would require very specific versions of the laws of nature, and that seemed…well, it felt like something more improbable.

On the other hand, the V-42 was real.  It was there.  It definitely did what it seemed to do.  He supposed, now that he knew it could hear him, he could even ask it.

More importantly, though, he was getting a bit sidetracked from his intention to discourage Walter from his idea.  Reorienting, he said, “Well, whatever it is that…I mean wherever it comes from, it’s a bit of a problem, right?”

“What do you mean?” Walter asked.

“Well…it says it only wants to work for me,” Albert replied.  “So it’s…I mean, how are we going to be able to do that…that spa idea or whatever that you had?  If it’ll only work for me, then no one else will be able to get any benefit, and if not, they’re sure not going to pay for it.”

“No, that’s not right,” Walter replied, sounding less worried than Albert had expected.  “I mean, sure, it may be programmed, or whatever, to want to work for you in general.  But we know it can work for other people.  I mean, it helped my allergies, and they’re still better than they’ve been in as long as I can remember.  So, it’s not like it’s programmed to imprint on one person and never work for anyone else.”

“Huh,” Albert grunted.

“And anyway, the stuff said it only wanted to work for you, Albert,” Walter went on.  “I mean, the fact that it even had to say that shows that it can work on other people.  Maybe it’s just saying that it only wants to do what you want it to do, even if other people use it.  That might make sense, since you’ve been sort of…reproducing or manufacturing or whatever to make more of it.  It may just…want to give you the message that it doesn’t want you just…just sharing it willy-nilly or something.  But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work.”

“But what if it does mean that?” Albert asked, trying to sound worried.

“It can’t, I already told you,” Walter said, and he sounded slightly desperate, like he was convincing himself as much as Albert.  “It helped my allergies.  As far as I can tell, it’s still helping my allergies.  They’re still getting better.  And you didn’t tell it to do that, right?  You had no idea that it was possible to tell it to do anything at that point.  Actually, we still don’t know for sure.”

“I…yeah, I guess you’ve got a point,” Albert admitted.  He tried not to sound too disappointed about the fact.

“Okay,” Walter said.  “So, yeah, maybe…actually, maybe this could be a really good thing.  If it only wants to work for you, to do what you tell it, that would mean that, even if someone was to figure out that it was the shampoo doing the…the spa treatment, whatever we do, that wouldn’t matter.  The shampoo wouldn’t work for them, even if they took it and tried to make more of it for themselves.  Actually, that might be really great!”

Walter sounded newly excited as this idea occurred to him.  Of course, Walter didn’t know that the stuff had specifically said that it didn’t want to work for him, since Albert had left that out, and unfortunately, he didn’t think he could bring it up now.  It would be too awkward, and it might make Walter suspect that Albert had actually asked it the question.

“Okay,” he said, not needing to force himself to sound hesitant, and hoping that Walter would just take it as him not being fully convinced.  “So, then, if that’s the case, then…I mean, I guess I could ask it if that’s the case, right?”

“What do you mean?” Walter asked.  Albert got the impression that Walter had started fantasizing about having his miracle spa and it being impervious to intellectual theft, and was probably dreaming of even greater riches and power than he’d imagine before.

“Well, I mean, we wouldn’t want to start…to start working on something that wasn’t ever going to work out.  So, it makes sense to just…to ask the V-42 if you’re right, if it’ll work for the spa idea thing as long as I’m the one asking it to do it, but that it won’t work for anyone who tries to take it.  Because if that’s not true, we may need to rethink it.”

“Wait,” Walter said, “you’re thinking of literally talking to the shampoo, of asking it a question?  I mean, I was just kind of joking about that idea of you introducing yourself to it.”

Albert felt embarrassed by Walter’s skepticism and incredulity.  Of course, Albert already knew that the stuff could not only understand him, but could reply specifically, and could make its own purposes clear.

“Why not?” he asked, trying to make himself sound not too completely convinced.  “I mean, if it can hear enough to have heard my voice and my name—either at the restaurant or somewhere else—and I know it can at least write a response, then why wouldn’t it be able to answer questions?  I mean, at least it would be a test.  If I ask it questions and it doesn’t do anything, then I guess that would show that it can’t, or that I’m doing something wrong…or maybe just that it doesn’t want to talk.  But if it can and it does…well, then we’ll know.”

Walter was silent for a moment, then he finally said, “I guess you’re right about that.  I mean, it sounds a bit nuts, but I guess all of this does.  And it ought to be a pretty straightforward test, I guess.”

“That’s true,” Albert said, relieved that Walter hadn’t been too resistant.  “I mean, I can just ask it questions like, ‘Can you understand me?’ and ‘Will you do what I ask you to do?’ or something like that, and…see if it gives me a reply.”

Walter was again silent for a moment, but then he said, “Yeah, I guess that’s true.  I mean, it might be a slow conversation, depending on how long it takes for it to write something out.  You said it took overnight for it happen, right?”

Albert was just about to correct Walter and say that he thought it actually shouldn’t take nearly that long, that the writing had erased itself with astonishing speed and the stuff had accelerated its conversion of the remaining cell phone once he had seen its message.  Then he realized that he didn’t want Walter to know that, didn’t want him to realize how quick the interaction could be.

It would be better, after all, if he had time to think and maybe to interact more with the V-42 between conversations with Walter.  He wanted to be able to figure out how he could dissuade Walter from his get-rich-quick scheme without it being too devastating.  Having more time, being able to take things more slowly, might be just the thing.

“Yeah,” he forced himself to say.  “As far as I can tell, it took all night for it to get only half of the water turned into shampoo and to write its…message.”

“Okay,” Walter said.  “So maybe tonight, you can ask it something simple.  Like you said, you can just ask it if it can understand you, something like that.  And…you can make sure to ask it to answer in complete sentences, I guess…”

“Huh?” Albert said.

“Well, come on,” Walter said quickly.  “I mean, if it just answers ‘yes’ or ‘no’, you won’t know if it’s really answering your question or just doing something automatic.  I mean, you could ask one of those magic eight-ball things if it can understand you, and it could answer ‘yes’, but that wouldn’t mean it really understands you.”

“Wow, you’re right,” Albert said.  “That’s…I never would’ve thought of that.  I guess that’s why you’re the scientist.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Walter muttered, sounding far from flattered by the compliment, though Albert had meant it sincerely.  Of course, he personally had no doubt that the stuff literally understood him, but it seemed he had been coy enough about his discussion that Walter was understandably less convinced.  Albert was glad of this.  The more time he had to think, and the more he could…well, the more he could try to talk to the stuff without Walter expecting him to be making as much headway, the better.

“Anyway, I guess that’s where we are now,” Walter went on.  “You just…I guess just ask it tonight if it really can understand you, if you talk to it, and see what it says.  If it says anything.  It may just sit there like ordinary shampoo, and that message you saw might’ve been automatic.”

Albert knew this not to be the case, but he thought it was good for Walter to doubt, at least for the moment.  “Right,” he said, trying his best to sound noncommittal or uncertain.

“Okay,” Walter said after a brief and awkward pause.  “I guess…well, this isn’t what I expected us to be talking about, but I guess I should’ve expected the unexpected.  Still, maybe we’ll know enough about it by the weekend at least to try to…to try to think ahead about things.”

“Right,” Albert said, a bit unsettled.  The weekend was almost there, and he hoped to be able to stall Walter a little longer than that.  “In the meantime, I’ll…well, I’ll ask it my question tonight when I get home, and I’ll let you know when I get an answer.”

“All right,” Walter said.  “Thanks for the updates, anyway.  And, hey, now I know why you were kind of putting off talking to me, earlier.  It’s…this is one weird situation, man.”

Albert laughed breathily.  “Boy, you can say that again.”

Then Walter’s tone changed a bit, and he sounded more excited and youthful as he added, “But, hey, you gotta admit, it’s pretty damn cool.  I never would’ve thought anything like this would happen.  I’m seriously lucky to be the one you came to about it.”

Albert was glad to have a friend as knowledgeable and with access to resources as Walter, so, in that, he felt lucky, too.  He was not at all sure how far he would have come in understanding what his new shampoo was if he hadn’t had Walter around.  But it was frustrating to have to worry about Walter’s ambition and how to deal with it.  Still, Walter was right that it was cool, and amazing, and exciting.  He knew that he was already far healthier and livelier than he probably ever would have been again for the rest of his life if it hadn’t been for the shampoo.

“Yeah,” he said.  “I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, that’s for sure.”

“Me neither,” Walter said, adding with a laugh, “Talk about your infinite improbabilities, right?”

Albert was too distracted to recognize the reference at the moment, but even so he said, “Yeah, exactly.  Okay, anyway, I’ll…well, if I get an answer, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.  Actually, I guess I’ll tell you if I don’t get an answer, too.”

“Thanks,” Walter said.  “Looking forward to it.”

They disconnected the call.