Neural Web

by Dima Zales

  “They’re taking me and Joe someplace,” Gogi says.

  “To image your heads,” Muhomor explains when I pass on Gogi’s comment. “They didn’t encrypt their ancient system using Tema, so I’m in there. I expedited things as much as I could. You’ll see a doctor as soon as the imaging is complete.”

  “They’re checking your brain for any damage,” I tell Gogi. “Nothing to worry about.”

  In my post-adrenaline slump, the need for sleep presses like a weight against my eyelids. Fighting to keep from yawning, I walk up to the check-in window.

  “Hi,” says the tall receptionist as she looks at me through fake eyelashes. “How can I help you?”

  “I’m here to visit my cousin. An ambulance just brought him in.”

  The receptionist looks at me with a gaze completely devoid of empathy. “If your cousin was just brought in, he won’t be in the system yet.”

  “He should be in the system,” I say, annoyed she didn’t even ask for his name. “He’s getting his head scanned.”

  “We can’t let you walk in while the patients are getting scanned,” she says in the same monotone. “Please take a seat.”

  “Muhomor.” I rub my temples both in VR and the real world. “Can you get me through the red tape?”

  Muhomor waves his hands like a conductor in VR, then says, “Walk up to the security guard and launch this app”—an icon that looks like a one-eyed pirate shows up in my AROS view—“and your Brainprint will confirm your identity as a doctor.”

  Brainprint was one of Muhomor’s early inventions. It replaced most ID cards, log-in passwords, bank account PINs, and other identity-verifying security. Brainprint uses Brainocytes for biometric identification, as each person’s brain is more unique than their retinas and fingerprints combined. In fact, Muhomor claims that Brainprint doesn’t allow identity theft at all, and if he thinks so, it’s safe to assume it’s pretty much the case. But if you make up a fake person from scratch (something Muhomor can do), you can also create a fictional Brainprint for such a person—and add the Brainprint to the hospital database.

  The screen next to the guard blinks green, and my name shows up as “Dr. Hui.”

  “Very mature,” I mutter as I plod through the opening door. In Russian, hui is the vulgar word for male genitalia.

  The guard consults the screen and chuckles. Given this hospital’s proximity to Brighton Beach, he probably understands what my name means.

  “Dr. Hui’s first name is Richard.” Muhomor’s VR grin is annoyingly cheerful. “But friends call him Dick, of course.”

  “I hope you weren’t stupid enough to give Joe an alias like that.” I cross my VR arms over my chest. “You’re about to be taken to the same bunker as he, and he’s bound to be in a bad mood after getting his head bashed in.”

  Muhomor’s smile disappears. “I didn’t get a chance to give them fake identities. The EMT guys read their Brainprint before I could interfere.”

  “Did you at least delete them from the hospital database?” My voice jumps an octave. “The bad guys seem to be operating out of Russia, and this hospital is crawling with Russian-speaking staff.”

  “The security for patients is better than for employees,” Muhomor says defensively. “They don’t want to remove the wrong person’s kidney due to an identity mix-up.”

  I shoot him an incredulous look. “So you can’t hide their tracks?”

  “If the brain imaging is clean, I’ll make it look as though they were never here,” he says. “If not, we’ll figure something out. I guess I can create fake people with the same medical problem as Joe and Gogi and fake an admission trail—”

  “I’m done with the scans.” Joe appears in VR, his lizard-like eyes watching without emotion as everyone jumps.

  “Gogi is done also,” Muhomor says. “No skull fractures or brain damage for either, but Gogi’s ankle is hurt.”

  “We need to get to the bunker then,” I say. “Get a couple of our Human++ doctors to join us there in case we need them. Speak with Dr. Jarvis in particular, and tell him to bring his whole surgical team along with any equipment they might need.”

  “ER,” Joe says. He disappears from VR.

  When I reach the emergency room, Joe is already standing, ready to go.

  “Blyad’,” Gogi mutters when his foot touches the floor. He tries to take a tentative step, then explodes into more Russian and Georgian curses that garner the attention of the Russian-speaking people around us.

  “Here, sit on this,” Joe says.

  I’m shocked to see he’s already pilfered a wheelchair. Gogi grudgingly sits, and Joe begins pushing, forcing me to follow.

  “This place smells bad,” Mr. Spock mentally complains from my pocket.

  “We’re leaving, bud.” I gently tap him through my clothes, angry at myself for forgetting to give him to Alan earlier.

  “Watch every camera in the hospital,” I tell my friends in VR. “Every time I’ve been to a hospital lately, it didn’t end well.”

  “Sir,” someone shouts from behind us. “Stop!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Whatever the nurse wants, we’ll never learn, because we proceed forward as fast as the wheelchair allows. To my surprise and relief, no one bothers us once we get outside the ER, and our luck continues to hold all the way to the parking lot.

  “My plane landed, and I got picked up,” Muhomor says in VR. “In case anyone cares.”

  Dominic also reports that he, Mom, Uncle Abe, and Alan made it to the airport without any problems, and that Muhomor is now in the car and en route to the bunker.

  “Lean on me,” I tell Gogi when we locate the luxury Lexus rental car waiting for us. He lets me and Joe help him get into the front seat.

  “For an ankle that wasn’t seriously damaged, it sure hurts like a sonofabitch,” he says as the car begins to move.

  “We’ll get you some ice when we get to the hideout,” I reassure him. “Run the Relief app for now.”

  “We should expedite the research on nanocytes that reduce swelling,” Ada says in the VR room. “Maybe once things calm down a bit.”

  “All our efforts should focus on computing resources,” Mitya counters. “And we might want to start thinking about that now, not later.”

  “More hardware so that you can spawn more of yourself?” Muhomor makes an okay sign with his left hand, then spears it with his right index finger in a gesture vaguely related to reproduction.

  “No.” Mitya’s avatar seems to become more solid, and his inability to keep a poker face shows me that Muhomor might’ve been right. “I want you guys to have the option of getting resurrected as I was. In the longer term, this option should exist for more people.”

  “He’s got a point,” Alan says. “We nearly died today.”

  “We have enough disk space to back ourselves up as you did,” I say. “It’s processing power that we lack.”

  “Yes,” Mitya says.

  “So if we die but have a backup”—I can’t help but shiver at the thought—“you can still resurrect us once the processing power is available in the future.”

  “Of course,” he says. “Obviously I can. But building new hardware will take a while—time that will seem like forever to someone like me, a mind whose subjective experience of the world is so much faster.”

  “Are you saying you’d miss us for an eternity?” Alan asks. It’s unclear if he’s teasing Mitya or is dead serious.

  “You understand it better than most, kid,” Mitya says. “I bet in your four years, you’ve experienced the equivalent of fifty subjective years.”

  “If not more,” Alan says sagely.

  Muhomor takes off his sunglasses and rubs his eyes. “Knowing that I depend on you for my resurrection, my fear of death is getting worse.”

  “That’s right.” Mitya rubs his palms like a supervillain. “You better be on your best behavior, or else you might wake up a hundred years from now. Or not at all.”

  �
�We should do the backups more regularly.” I make a mental note to speak with therapy Einstein about my utter horror at being in a disembodied state like Mitya. “And I agree that we should work on the hardware problem, especially since that aligns with so many of our other endeavors.”

  “Anyone against?” Muhomor looks at Ada.

  “We can make hardware a priority,” my wife says, “but we should still work on nanocytes that reduce inflammation.”

  “Agreed,” I say for everyone.

  “Since no one is trying to kill you at the moment, how about we brainstorm?” Mitya says.

  “Speaking of that,” Alan says, “our car just reached the bunker.”

  I exhale in the real world and realize it’s been many minutes since I held my breath in worry for my mom and son. “Great. In that case, let’s talk hardware while I’m stuck in my own car. I’ve been thinking a lot about quantum dot cellular automata lately, so maybe let’s start with that.”

  When Gogi first floated the idea of building the bunker four years ago, I told him he was bonkers. Now I’m glad Joe took his colleague’s side, and we ended up with this impenetrable monstrosity. Originally a Cold War-era nuclear fallout shelter, the renovated space is a survivalist’s wet dream. The entry door alone cost more than a modest house, and it’s impervious to most explosions, which is what motivated me to come here.

  Inside, the bunker looks like a malignant man cave that kept growing in someone’s basement until it became the size of a small mansion. The comfortable plush furniture tries to trick you into thinking you’re in a luxury hotel, but the lack of windows betrays the truth.

  “If the zombie apocalypse were to happen tomorrow, this is where you’d want to be,” Muhomor says to us in lieu of a greeting. “It looks darker and smells even stuffier than I imagined.”

  He’s right. The place smells like a wine cellar where all the wine has turned to vinegar.

  “Joshen’ka,” my mom exclaims as she takes in Joe’s bandaged head. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.” He takes off the bandage, sees his father’s worried expression, and shows the side of his head. “Barely a bump.”

  We sit Gogi on the nearby couch.

  “Does your foot hurt?” Alan asks him.

  “Ankle,” Gogi replies. “I’m sure it’s going to be fine.”

  “Dr. Keeplan,” JC calls from the grotto-like kitchen section of the bunker. “Please have a look at Gogi’s ankle.”

  The portly doctor swings into action, and soon Gogi has an ice pack on his ankle and a Percocet in his bloodstream.

  “Boss,” Jacob says to Joe as he enters the space designated as the living room of the bunker. “Your woman—I mean, your guest. She’s awake now.”

  Joe puts down the sandwich he’s been munching on and is instantly on his feet. “Where?”

  “The storage room,” Jacob says. Looking down like a guilty schoolchild, he adds, “She’s breaking a lot of pickles.”

  “Do we have a view into that room?” I ask my friends in VR.

  “Yes.” Muhomor sets up a large screen in the bunker’s Augmented Reality, making it look like a giant flat-screen TV we used as recently as three years ago.

  On the screen, Tatum’s delicate features are twisted in a mask of fury. Like a wronged housewife, she grabs a glass jar of pickled tomatoes and hurls it against the pantry wall—and by the looks of the room, it’s not the first one.

  “I made those,” Mom exclaims in a horrified whisper. “I used those purple Ukrainian tomatoes Ada brought for me.”

  Joe’s expression is completely unreadable as he springs into motion. Before anyone can blink, he’s in the camera view, opening the door to the storage room.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tatum looks Joe up and down, her eyes narrowing. She must not recognize him as the guy who knocked her out, because the latest jar isn’t yet flying at his head.

  Instead of worrying about a potential projectile, Joe climbs the shelves. We all, Tatum included, watch his actions with morbid fascination. Only when my cousin’s palm grows large does it occur to me what he’s doing. When the camera is ripped out of its socket, I congratulate myself for being right. Maybe he’s trying to win Tatum’s confidence by showing her that she was under surveillance. Oh hell, who am I kidding—he just doesn’t want us to watch.

  Everyone stares at the blank screen for a couple of beats before Ada asks, “Is there another camera in that room?”

  Muhomor shakes his head, and when I ask Joe’s security guys the same question, they all claim there’s no other camera.

  I walk up to the door, hoping I can at least overhear something. Unfortunately, the thick, heavy wood blocks any noise from escaping.

  “Maybe this means she’s not screaming in pain,” I say, only slightly joking.

  “You can’t let him do this.” Ada’s amber eyes glint dangerously in the VR room.

  “Do what?” Mitya asks. “We don’t know what he’s doing. For all we know, they might be having a civil conversation.”

  “Someone is clearly in need of a brain,” Muhomor says. “This is Joe. If she’s not screaming, it’s because he has her gagged. Or worse.”

  I wonder if Joe’s people would obey a direct order to go check on Tatum, assuming I wanted to be the guy giving such an order, which I don’t. Dominic might listen to me, but I can’t help but notice he’s not rushing to check on Tatum voluntarily.

  We argue for a few minutes in real time, and Ada has almost convinced me to ask Dominic to break the door when said door swings open and Joe swaggers out. Hard to read in the best of times, his current facial expression is an enigma wrapped in the skin of the Loch Ness monster.

  “She’s not involved,” he says over his shoulder as he strides past us into the gloomily lit kitchen.

  I follow him in and watch as he swiftly finishes his uneaten sandwich, then proceeds to get more bread from the pantry and some cheese from the fridge. “What do you mean?”

  “She didn’t order the attacks,” he says without looking up from spreading mayo on the bread.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Go talk to her.” He angrily slaps some cheese onto the bread. “And give her this.”

  He hands me the sandwich, which I regard as if it might sprout tentacles. Oblivious to my confusion, he grabs a sealed bottle of Poland Spring water and hands that to me as well.

  “I should at least check if she’s okay,” I say in the VR room after making sure he’s not in there. “Plus it doesn’t hurt to double-check if she really is innocent or not. I mean, she was our best lead.”

  “The RHO was,” Ada corrects. “But maybe she’s not its leader as everyone thinks. Or maybe they have independent cells that don’t operate under her direct command.”

  I head over to the room where Joe’s captive awaits. For some reason, the food and drink feel like lead in my hands. Why couldn’t all this have waited until tomorrow morning? I’d pay a couple of million for a quick nap.

  Alan is blocking my way. I look down at him questioningly.

  “You might find this helpful.” He hands me a tablet computer, one of those ancient relics that only the likes of my uncle still use. “No Brainocytes, remember? You won’t be able to show her anything online without it.”

  “Thanks, son,” I say on autopilot. I hold the sandwich in my teeth while I slide the tablet under my armpit.

  Jacob opens the heavy door for me, and I momentarily hesitate, afraid of blood and whatever else I might find. The little spike of anxiety jolts me awake. Realizing it’s not safe to keep the door ajar so long, I step in and enable my Share app so my friends can see what I see.

  The woman is sitting on a stack of canned beans, her piercing blue eyes regarding me with a mixture of curiosity and disdain.

  “Michael Cohen,” she says in a pleasant singsong voice. “I should’ve guessed you’re in charge here.”

  “The way she said your name, you’d think she was talking about Lucifer.” Mit
ya manifests in the room’s public Augmented Reality, choosing the little devil avatar he sometimes likes to use.

  Tatum doesn’t acknowledge him at all, confirming her lack of Brainocytes. Her attention is on my hands, so I extend the water and sandwich.

  “Joe wanted me to give you this.”

  To my huge surprise, she doesn’t shudder at his name. Instead, her eyes gleam with some undefinable emotion. Realizing I’m watching her, she quickly recovers her mask of disdain, but that doesn’t stop her from grabbing both the sandwich and the water.

  Taking a giant bite of the sandwich, she eyes me challengingly as she slowly chews her food. If she thinks she can bore me so easily, she’s going to be disappointed. Thanks to Brainocytes, if the real world is boring (which it almost always is), I can do a hundred other things virtually.

  I lean against the wall of canned beans and make sure Tatum can tell that I’m comfortable enough to stay here for hours, if she insists. I then reply to all the emails that have accumulated since these crazy events began, launch several processor designs since that’s a new priority, initiate an important conversation with Ada about Alan’s plan to earn another PhD from Yale, begin writing a couple of apps, get started beating several world champions at chess, and outline a few chapters for my latest publication.

  Once Tatum figures out she can’t bore me into leaving, she says, “At the rallies, I always said what you did was criminal.” She unscrews the bottle cap and gulps the water with the zest of a desert dweller. “I didn’t realize how literal that was.”

  “You have the gall to bring up criminal acts with me?” My voice hardens. I’m having flashbacks of the multiple ways I nearly died today, along with memories of all the favorite things lost in my deceased penthouse—like the Swiss armchair I’d sit in while in VR and the obscenely expensive Pollock and Dalí originals. What a ghastly loss. I take a deep breath of pickled vegetables and add more calmly, “Your people tried to kill me. Multiple times. You blew up everything I own.”