by Andrew Lane
‘I’m beginning to sense a theme,’ Bex’s voice said in his ear.
Kieron started to say something back, but he stopped himself just in time. There was only one person in the reception lobby, but he didn’t know how many others might be watching him on CCTV. This place struck him as being obsessed with security, albeit in a very discreet way. Instead he smiled at the man.
‘You’re Ryan Allen and you have an appointment,’ Bex prompted.
‘Ryan Allen,’ he said. ‘I have an appointment.’
The man looked up from his computer and nodded. ‘Good morning, Mr Allen. I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but there has been some confusion. Your appointment is in Mr Zanderbergen’s diary, but it seems to have been overlooked somehow. I can only apologise. Mr Zanderbergen’s personal assistant will be down momentarily.’ He gestured towards a water dispenser at the end of the reception desk which, Kieron saw with slight surprise, was filled not with water but with a pale amber liquid. ‘Please – help yourself to some iced tea while you wait.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but where I come from, tea is served hot and with milk.’
‘Nice one – the exaggerated Brit persona is working well,’ Bex said in his ear.
Kieron stood where he was, looking around. Soon he heard a soft chime, and a previously invisible door opened in the wall to one side of the desk. A woman dressed in a severe turquoise business suit strode out. She was a redhead. Kieron was beginning to suspect that Todd Zanderbergen had a thing about redheads.
‘Mr Allen?’ She approached with her hand held out. ‘I’m Judith. My apologies for the slight delay. Mr Zanderbergen is expecting you. Please come with me.’
Kieron shook her hand and followed her to what he realised was a lift. ‘Thank you.’
‘Tell them what a lovely building they have,’ Bex said in his ear.
‘You have a lovely building,’ he repeated as the lift doors closed.
Judith smiled. Perfect teeth. ‘Thank you. We’re very proud of it. We’re carbon-neutral and we recycle all the water. Nothing is wasted.’
‘Lovely,’ was the only thing he could think of to say.
Judith glanced up at the ceiling of the lift. ‘Eight,’ she said clearly, and the lift started to move. Looking around, Kieron could see no controls at all: no buttons, no switches, no indicators. Everything was apparently voice-controlled.
‘What do we do if something goes wrong?’ he asked.
Judith glanced at him. ‘We say “Help” in a clear, calm voice.’
‘OK. That’s reassuring.’
With a few moments to think, rather than just react, Kieron felt his nerves coming back. He glanced around, looking at the lights in the ceiling, the mirrored glass walls, anything to distract himself from his worries.
‘Calm down,’ Bex said in his ear. ‘You’re doing fine.’
Kieron tried to control his breathing. He’d almost mastered it when the lift door slid open to reveal a carpeted working area where people dressed in a whole variety of ways – from jeans and sports gear to chinos and even suits – occupied computer-equipped desks that seemed to be arranged randomly rather than in rows or groups. Rather than chairs, they sat on inflatable balls coloured in pastel blues, pinks and greens. Everyone had hair that was arguably some shade of red, from bright orange to deep burgundy.
Seeing his surprise, Judith said, ‘Our philosophy here at the Goldfinch Institute is to let people be themselves, not to regiment them. We find they work better that way.’
‘I like it already,’ Kieron said. ‘And the … the seating arrangements.’
‘Orthopedically designed to minimise back strain,’ she said. ‘Please – come with me.’
‘Those computers aren’t standard ones,’ Bex said in his ear. ‘I can’t find the specifications anywhere online.’
‘And what about those computers?’ Kieron asked as Judith led him through the random arrangement of desks. ‘They don’t look like anything you can buy in the shops.’
‘Well spotted.’ Judith smiled a tight, professional smile. ‘We make them ourselves. Nobody else can buy them. They’re about five years ahead of anything that’s available to the general public.’
Kieron desperately wanted to take a look at the computers, see what they could do, but Judith led him towards an office in the centre of the floor space that was entirely walled in glass. Inside, a man who looked only about five years older than Kieron was standing at a desk high enough off the ground for him to use the computer keyboard without having to sit down. No inflatable ball for him. A red-headed woman wearing a black business suit stood over to one side, watching Kieron as he approached.
‘That’s Tara Gallagher,’ Bex said. Kieron could hear something in her tone, but he wasn’t sure what it was. ‘She’s Zanderbergen’s Head of Security. Watch out for her – she’s clever, remember.’
Before Kieron could react, Judith knocked on a glass door set into a glass wall of the fishbowl office, opened it and gestured to Kieron to enter.
The man standing by the elevated desk turned around. He wore black jeans, ripped at the knees, and a T-shirt with a band logo on. As he turned towards Kieron, Kieron noticed that it was a Lethal Insomnia T-shirt.
‘Mr Allen – welcome to the Goldfinch Institute! I’m Todd Zanderbergen. Call me Todd.’
‘Please, call me Ryan. Cool T-shirt, by the way. I’m a big fan.’ He turned back to Judith, standing in the doorway. ‘Thanks for your help.’
She smiled, as if they shared a secret, and closed the glass door.
‘You know they’re local?’ Todd held out his hands in feigned astonishment. ‘How cool is that? They’re in town recording their new album at the moment. Totally crowdfunded, but you probably knew that.’ Todd grabbed Kieron’s hand between both of his own and shook it enthusiastically. ‘Oh, and this is my Head of Security, by the way – Tara Gallagher,’ he said, grinning as he nodded towards the woman in the black suit. ‘She’s here to make sure I don’t give away all my company secrets. I’m terrible – I just love talking about what we do. Apparently that’s bad business practice.’
‘Stay calm,’ Bex’s voice murmured in Kieron’s ear. ‘Just talk in generalities.’
Tara walked over and nodded at Kieron. ‘A pleasure,’ she said, shaking his hand.
‘You’re English,’ Kieron said.
She nodded. ‘I moved to the USA a few years ago. Can I get you a drink? Water, maybe?
‘Yes, please, that would be great.’
‘Look, I have to be honest,’ Todd said as Tara moved away to type something into the keyboard on the desk, ‘there’s been some kind of miscommunication. We kind of lost your details somewhere along the way. We know you’re here for a meeting, but we’re a bit confused as to why. I know you’ve come a long way, and I’m going to make as much time available as you need, but it would be great if you could give us a quick run-down of what you’re expecting from us.’
‘Normally,’ Tara said, moving back to stand beside Todd, ‘we’d expect security clearances to be sent over, along with an agenda.’
Bex’s voice said in Kieron’s ear, ‘Tell them you sent everything well in advance, and you’re surprised they’ve lost it all. Sound impatient.’
‘My people sent everything in advance,’ Kieron parroted, trying to sound as if the words were just coming to him unprepared. ‘I have to say, I’m surprised that you haven’t got it.’
Todd flashed Tara a quick angry glance. Just for an instant, and then the anger was gone and he was smiling again. ‘I can only apologise. Data gets lost sometimes. Misfiled, deleted, who knows? People make mistakes, much as I try to discourage that kind of sloppiness. So – we know you’re interested in non-lethal weapons. That’s great, because it’s our bread-and-butter work. What specifically are you here to talk about?’
Bex started to say something, but Kieron had already started speaking and couldn’t stop. ‘I’ve … got a design for a non-lethal weapon that can cause instant unco
nsciousness,’ he said.
Todd held up his hands. ‘Let me stop you there. Look, I don’t want to waste either of our time. We’ve tried that. It’s the Holy Grail of non-lethal weapons – being able to knock out terrorists who’ve taken hostages before they can blow up their hostages. If we crack that, it’ll make our fortunes – well, in my case, my fifth fortune, but who’s counting? We’ve checked out all the anaesthetics, but none of them works fast enough, or is safe in high doses. Believe it or not, we’ve evaluated over forty different analogues of fentanyl without finding anything we could use. You would not believe the number of monkeys we killed doing the tests. Rendering rioters or terrorists unconscious just isn’t feasible.’
‘The trick is not to use gases,’ Kieron said, trying not to think about monkeys that had been gassed in the name of science. ‘They’re unpredictable and quite clumsy. I’ve been looking into something else entirely. Have you tried cancelling out brainwaves – in effect just switching people’s brains off?’
Todd stared at him for a long moment. ‘Interesting,’ he said eventually. ‘Tell me more.’
Kieron opened his mouth to answer, but Bex spoke in his ear. ‘Not without a non-disclosure agreement. Tell him.’
‘Not without a non-disclosure agreement,’ Kieron repeated smoothly.
Todd nodded. ‘Understood. Completely understood. I guess you’ve got one I can get my people to look over?’
Kieron pulled the thumb-drive from his pocket and held it up. ‘On here, along with some other stuff you might like to see.’
‘Sounds intriguing. Come on – give me a heads-up. What kind of stuff?’
In his ear, Kieron heard Bex saying, ‘Tell him about the neural simulator.’ More quietly she added, ‘After all, we went to so much trouble to get it.’
‘I can take you through the theory later on,’ Kieron said, ‘but I’ve got a simulated brain that I’ve developed. The way the individual neurons fire together in groups simulates realistic brainwaves – alpha, beta, gamma, delta and so on.’
‘Ooh – interesting. So this simulated brain,’ Todd asked mildly, ‘does it think? Is it, like, an artificial intelligence?’
Air hissed through Bex’s teeth as she took a breath. ‘That’s a trick question if ever I heard one.’
‘So what’s the answer?’ Kieron asked automatically, and then realised to his horror that he’d spoken to Bex out loud by accident.
Fortunately, Todd hadn’t noticed. ‘Well, that’s what I want to know,’ he said, nodding. He seemed to have assumed that Kieron’s question was rhetorical. ‘Come on – you can tell me that at least. I’ll sign the non-disclosure agreement, no problem. I’m just curious.’
Kieron thought he could hear rustling noises as Bex waved her hands around, searching for any information that could help him. He felt like muttering, ‘Don’t worry – I’ve got this,’ but he’d already nearly messed up once. He couldn’t afford another slip. ‘It’s a simulation, not a replication,’ he said eventually as Bex was clearly still searching. ‘Although I guess if you think a driving simulator game is the same as driving a real car, then you might think that a brain simulator is the same as a real brain. You and I are cleverer than that though, aren’t we? We know the difference.’
Todd nodded. ‘Good answer. I guess your simulation produces brainwaves that are similar to real brainwaves though. That’s the test.’
‘Identical,’ Kieron bluffed.
‘OK.’ Todd paused, musing. His face suddenly lit up. ‘Hey, look at this!’ he said, rushing across his office and grabbing something from a glass display table on the far side – a high-tech weapon, like something from a sci-fi film, with a stock, a handle and a trigger but with a flat circular plate at the end of the barrel instead of a hole for bullets. The only thing that made it look military rather than like something an alien commando might use was its colour – matte khaki, so it didn’t stand out from any background.
‘What is it?’ Kieron asked, intrigued.
‘It’s a microwave skin heater,’ Todd said, hefting it. ‘The US Army has a much bigger version, and when I say “much bigger”, I mean it’s the size of a truck. We’ve managed to miniaturise the technology, and we’re discussing contracts now. It generates microwaves, just like your basic kitchen microwave, but the difference is that the wavelength means they don’t penetrate beneath the first millimetre of the skin. Oh, and the other difference –’ he smiled – ‘is that this one doesn’t operate in a casing.’
‘So what does it do?’ Kieron asked. ‘Although I guess the answer is in the name.’
‘That’s right. The microwaves cause skin heating in that top layer of skin. It starts out feeling like ants crawling, and then it changes to an itching, then a gentle burning, then it’s like someone’s put a huge magnifying glass between you and the sun, and the entire heat and weight of the sun is bearing down on you, scorching every inch of you. Entirely harmless, doesn’t cause any permanent damage, but it’s phenomenally painful. At the moment it’s used for crowd control – breaking up rioters and the like – but we’ve made it into a one-on-one weapon. Say you’ve got a gunman who’s taken a hostage, or a terrorist with a bomb strapped to their chest – this weapon can incapacitate them until they can be disarmed.’
‘Without causing their finger to clench on the trigger?’ Kieron asked, ‘or the bomb to detonate?’
Todd shrugged. ‘There are always bugs to be ironed out. That’s what research is for. Which reminds me – the brainwaves you send back into this simulated brain to cancel out the actual brainwaves – are you just recording and repeating the original brainwaves, a half-cycle out of phase, or are you generating fresh brainwaves using, oh, I don’t know, Fourier analysis or something?’
Kieron thought he could answer this one. He often spent time in the music studios at school, after lessons had finished, playing around with the synthesisers. Reading the manuals, and looking stuff up on the Internet, had given him a fairly good grounding in how signals were generated.
‘Recording and replaying, obviously,’ he said with as much confidence as he could muster. He delved into his memory, desperately trying to remember things he’d read. ‘Fourier analysis reproduces a waveform by adding lots of different sine waves together, but there’s an unpredictable processing lag. It’s far easier just to record the brainwaves and play them back.’ He smiled disarmingly. ‘The important thing, of course, is that we can demonstrate what happens when the brainwaves are cancelled out using the simulator. It’s a practical demonstration that it’s possible to just switch a brain off – temporarily.’
‘The trick,’ Todd said, staring at Kieron, ‘is making sure you can switch it back on with no damage whenever you want.’
‘That is the trick,’ Kieron said. ‘And that’s where the non-disclosure agreement comes into effect.’
‘Yeah, but you can give me a hint, can’t you?’ Todd smiled engagingly.
Fortunately, just at that moment there was a knock on the glass door. It was Judith, Todd’s PA. She had a glass of water.
‘For you,’ Todd said as she entered and handed him the glass. Kieron took a grateful sip.
Trying to change the subject, he looked around. ‘This might be a stupid question, but is there anywhere I could sit down? It was a long flight yesterday, and I didn’t sleep very well.’
Todd shrugged apologetically. ‘Yeah, I kinda don’t like sitting down. I find I’m so much more energised if I have to stand up when I’m working.’ He pointed towards his computer, on its elevated desk. ‘Better for my posture as well. So many health benefits.’
Kieron nodded towards the people outside Todd’s square working bubble, sitting on their inflated balls. ‘Was there a palace revolution? Did the serfs refuse to adopt healthy work practices?’
‘Careful,’ Bex warned, quietly and privately, ‘you don’t want to alienate him.’
‘Yeah.’ Todd smiled, but the expression didn’t seem to reach his eyes. ‘I tried to pe
rsuade them, but it turns out if you try to force people to stand up all the time when they’re working, it’s a health and safety violation. Plus, they resign. So I had the stability balls bought in. They’re almost as good.’ He shrugged. ‘Had to install coffee machines as well. The juice bar didn’t go down too well. Apparently caffeine is more of a stimulant than wheatgrass.’
‘Do you get a lot of staff leaving?’ Kieron tried to make the question as innocent-sounding as possible, not wanting Todd to know that their task there was to investigate the strange cluster of deaths of Goldfinch Institute staff, but he heard Bex take a noisy breath through the earpiece.
‘Might be a little soon to ask a direct question like that,’ she said.
Todd glanced inquiringly at Kieron for a moment before answering. ‘All organisations have some degree of staff turnover. We have our share of course, but I hope that the remuneration package and the staff benefits make us attractive.’
Kieron smiled back at him but said nothing.
‘You want me to bring one of the balls in?’ Todd asked. ‘If you’re not feeling too well …’
‘I’ll survive,’ Kieron said. He took a sip of the ice-cold water. ‘After all, I was sitting down all during the flight. My muscles could probably do with a little stretching.’
‘Hey! I should have thought!’ Todd brought both hands to his forehead theatrically. ‘If you’re here for a few days, do you want me to see if I can get you an invite to Lethal Insomnia’s recording sessions? I’m, like, great friends with the studio manager. He promised to sneak me in, if I get some free time. Would you like that?’
A set of fireworks seemed to go off in Kieron’s head. ‘That would be – fantastic!’ he breathed. Knowing that Lethal Insomnia were actually in the city at the same time as him had been driving him slightly crazy. It had been a useful coincidence that had allowed him to persuade his mother that going to Albuquerque was a good idea, but he’d hardly dared hope that his cover story – the one he’d told her, not the one he was busy telling Todd Zanderbergen – might actually come true. Suddenly it was difficult to take a breath.