Binary Storm

by Christopher Hinz

  Stone Face sat in the corner, reading some ancient hardcover book. Nick, impatient, checked the time on his attaboy. Early evening, almost 7:30. Bel would already be on her way to his apartment.

  The doc had been doing his thing on Jannik’s brain for over an hour. He’d inserted postmortem accumulators to access the billions of phantom brain cells that survived for a time after death and scoop up Jannik’s final batch of short-term memories. He’d removed and examined the mnemonic cursors. All recorded data had been run through neuro software in an effort to determine why the personality restructuring had failed.

  Nick didn’t need to hang around, of course. He could get a full report in the morning. But as badly as he wanted to spend a soothing night with Bel and hopefully forget the day’s troubles, his desire for answers was equally strong.

  Sosoome remained at Nick’s apartment. He’d attaboyed the mech a short time ago with instructions to let Bel in and explain he’d been delayed. Sosoome had promised to entertain her, which was not exactly reassuring. He could only hope the mech wouldn’t say or do anything so obnoxious or gross that she’d bolt before he got there.

  “Any progress?” he asked, trying to contain his urgency.

  The doc was seated at a workstation. He paused to look up from his monitor. “Having you peering over my shoulder and asking that question every five minutes will not hasten the process.”

  “Sorry.”

  “The contradiction between conflicting internal forces is perhaps the oldest dialectic unique to the human spirit.”

  “Come again?”

  “Curiosity is a byproduct of the cerebral imagination. Sex, or at least the promise of it, is a byproduct of a more primordial neurological region. Ergo, conflicting forces.”

  “Yeah, it’s true, I want to get laid.” He gestured to the brain, whose hemispheres had been split open like the halves of a peach. “But I need to know what happened to our friend here.”

  “I recall you once telling me that patience is a virtue.”

  “I must have been drunk when I said it.”

  He checked the time thrice more before Doctor Emanuel finally turned off his monitors. Retrieving his cane, he hobbled over to the sink to wash up. A frown warned Nick that the news wasn’t good.

  “Perhaps you should go make love to your girlfriend first. Increased endorphin production might better help you deal with disappointment.”

  “I’ll survive. Hit me with it.”

  “The cause of Jannik Mutter’s behavioral breakdown was twofold. First and foremost, the synaptic restructuring could not overcome the deepest embedded response characteristics based on his dualistic nature. I’m now convinced the problem is endemic to binaries.”

  “You’re saying mnemonic cursors, this whole process, won’t work on any Paratwa.”

  “Unfortunately, that appears to be correct. I’m surprised this one lasted as long as he did without cracking.”

  “What if you increase the level of control, make him into a retroslave?”

  Doctor Emanuel shook his head. “Jannik Mutter’s nature could not have been effectively camouflaged. Even if I’d implanted enough mnemonic cursors to make him pliable to someone else’s will – a true retroslave – the fact that he was a tway could not have been overcome. It would always burst through.”

  Nick’s worst fears about the suitability of a tway-led combat team had come to pass. They couldn’t use a former assassin. And it seemed increasingly unlikely they’d be able to find a human skilled with the Cohe who possessed the right qualities for combat. He was back to square one.

  The doc finished washing up and dried his hands under an antibiotic heater. “Go home. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  Nick grabbed his jacket but hesitated at the door. “You said the breakdown was twofold. What’s the second reason?”

  “Even if his true nature hadn’t erupted to overwhelm the false memories, the presence of that termination program would have done him in sooner or later. The neurological reason in this instance is a bit more difficult to describe in layperson’s terms. Suffice it to say, the installation of such wetware causes a reaction somewhat equivalent to the phantom limb sensation in a human patient who’s suffered the loss of an appendage. In the case of a former tway, it accentuates the feeling that something is missing within him, ie his former tway.”

  “What about another type of kill switch? A lackluster or a consummator?”

  “I’m afraid not. The concept simply isn’t viable.”

  Nick repressed an urge to let out his frustration by hitting or kicking something. He could only hope the worst of his foul mood was gone by the time he got home. But he wasn’t optimistic.

  Thunking his attaboy, he turned off the com link. He didn’t want to deal with any calls at the moment, particularly from Bel. Best to tell her everything in person.

  “OK, screw it, doc. I’m outta here. Sure you don’t need a ride?”

  “Stone Face is driving me.” The aged face broke into a smile as he glanced over at the soldier, still engrossed in the book. “I’m looking forward to continuing our conversation. He has some rather interesting views on the relative merits of contemporary court systems versus historic merchant networks for resolution of commercial disputes.”

  Nick’s frustration was clouding his judgment. He couldn’t tell whether the doc was joking.

  Twenty-Eight

  “My father could be clever at times,” Mattia Witherstone admitted. “But if Daddy had some kind of special information, he wouldn’t have passed it on to me. He kept E-Tech business to himself. ‘Kiss kiss,’ he’d say.”

  “Pardon?” Bel asked.

  “Kiss kiss. Keep it simple, stupid. And then he’d repeat for good measure. Want to know what I’d say back to him?”

  “No, what?”

  “Glub glub, fire in the tub!”

  Mattia laughed. Bel had no idea what the phrase meant or why the thirteen year-old found it amusing. Maybe it was a mnemonic remnant of some blast ad she’d recently chewed on. In any case, teenspeak had changed radically since Bel’s schooldays.

  She should have been at Nick’s apartment by now. But the Witherstone condo was on the way and an informal interview wouldn’t take long. Besides, it would be one less task to deal with tomorrow, which was already looking to be a long day at the office.

  Mattia’s gangly torso still displayed the signs of budding adolescence, unusual for her demographic. By that age, most of her female contemporaries would have had breast and hip augmentation to make them appear more mature, with the boys opting for penile amping and hirsute accelerants. Perhaps Mattia’s parents had been more traditional and hadn’t permitted such bodmodding.

  Still, they’d allowed her to tint her short hair with luminescent grayglo, suggestive of maturity yet with serious side effects, including a propensity toward female baldness and early onset senility. She’d also apparently been allowed to remain home alone with only an indifferent drudge for supervision.

  Bel sat in a plush chair in the living room across from Mattia. Her host was a meter off the floor, strapped upright to a voodoo slab, the latest rage for adolescents. Bel didn’t grasp the attraction of binding oneself to a vertical platform that inflicted its user with random pinches, jabs and electric shocks, all in the name of producing, according to the ads, “ecstasy through agony.” Then again, she wasn’t in the midst of those prime experimentation years, not to mention dealing with grief over the recent loss of a parent.

  “Mattia, if you don’t mind me asking, what did you and your father talk about during that last conversation?”

  “Oh, the usual. He asked me how my studies were going. Our Social Survival class is doing a practicum at University of Penn. It’s really exciting. We’re working with La Gloria de la Ciencia to design a new kind of wall that the unsecs will never be able to breach.”

  Building new walls won’t stop the erosion of our culture.

  Bel wanted to chime in with fur
ther thoughts on the absurdity of La Gloria de la Ciencia’s ideas, as well as voice her overall disdain for the goals of the proscience fanatics. But now wasn’t the time.

  Besides, at least Mattia hadn’t surrendered hope and was trying to stay involved, unlike so many others of her generation. Young people, at least those fortunate enough to be raised in sec areas, were coming of age in a world where the zeitgeist indoctrinated them with the idea that an apocalypse was imminent.

  It was no coincidence that the scholastic dropout rate was the highest ever recorded. And E-Tech surveys showed that nearly eighty percent of individuals between the ages of twelve and twenty had at least considered joining one of the numerous doomers’ cults or committing suicide as a solo act.

  “Did your father happen to mention anything that might have had to do with the Paratwa?”

  Mattia grimaced. The voodoo slab had apparently just administered a notable pinch, jab or jolt.

  The sensation passed. Her face relaxed. “I can’t recall Daddy saying anything about Paras. But again, he didn’t talk about that stuff very often. When Mommy was still living with him, she used to say, ‘No politics at the table, kiss kiss if you’re able.’ But for her, it meant something a little different. Instead of ‘Keep it simple, stupid’ it was ‘Keep it simple, Syobew.’”

  Mattia lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Syobew was her pet name for Daddy. It had to do with how much he really liked his vodka.”

  Bel shook her head, not following the teen’s train of thought. Mattia gave an exaggerated sigh at her slowness.

  “Syobew. It’s WeBoys spelled backward. That vodka was his all-fave. He talked about it constantly.” She rolled her eyes, indicating how boring it had been to listen to such talk.

  “Mommy used to say Daddy liked his WeBoys better than he liked her. But he could only afford one bottle a month. Come to think of it, that was about as often as they had sex.” Mattia giggled. “I used to sneak my buzzbee into their bedroom to spy on them until Mommy found out and swatted it down.”

  The teen convulsed. Appendages flopped and her head whipped from side to side in a rictus of agony. It looked like the voodoo slab was electrocuting her.

  “Are you OK?” Bel asked, coming halfway out of her chair, ready to rush to her aid.

  The convulsions stopped. Mattia shrugged and continued as if nothing had happened.

  “Daddy used to have some robot buy his WeBoys for him on the sly so the purchases wouldn’t show up on his statements. Because if Mommy ever found out he was spending that kind of money on vodka, she’d go all wailpissy on him and have our drudge flush it down the toilet. That’s why Daddy only kept those bottles at his office.”

  “I see,” Bel said, trying to swing the talk back to that final conversation between father and daughter. But Mattia was on a roll.

  “Daddy drank way too much. I think that’s why their marriage descrambled. Actually, I think marriage is a dead institution. Even my Optimism tutor says so. She’s in a menage à trois with a transwoman and an engineered hermaphrodite, and she says noncommittal multisex is the future of relationships. Glub glub, fire in the tub!”

  Bel sensed there was nothing more to be learned here. She stood up to leave but couldn’t resist offering a spot of adult advice.

  “Relationship commitments are important, Mattia, no matter what certain people say.”

  “Uh huh, right. Oh, and Ms Bakana, if you ever want to try out my voodoo slab, just let me know. Come on over anytime Mommy’s not here. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much anytime!”

  She erupted into a fit of wild laughter, which ended an instant later when the slab administered its next affliction. As Mattia winced and squirmed, Bel made her way to the door. In her own teen years, exotic pleasure-pain activities had mostly been the province of the boys, who engaged in violent smashsports or consumed bellyache-inducing chemicals in order to emit sweet-scented farts. She hoped that whatever sort of ecstasy Mattia hoped to achieve was worth the suffering.

  The Witherstone condo was on the seventy-eighth floor. By the time the high-speed elevator reached ground level seconds later, a vague thought had morphed into an idea. Bel had a theory about where Mattia’s father might have sequestered the intel that had gotten him killed.

  It can’t be that simple. And yet…

  She called Nick but couldn’t get through. He must have turned off his attaboy. As she settled into the back of the limo, she contacted Sosoome.

  “Tell Nick to meet me at my office. Tell him it might be important.”

  “Might be important?” Sosoome challenged. “Yo girl, that’s pretty damn vague.”

  She was getting used to the mech’s default mode, which was giving people a hard time. “Just leave him the message, Sosoome,” she sternly ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Twenty-Nine

  It was a short ride to E-Tech headquarters from Witherstone’s. Bel dismissed the bodyguards. During a frosty encounter with Bull Idwicki after she’d ditched her escort for the zoo excursion, she and the Security Chief had come to an understanding. The bodyguards would back off when she needed privacy, and if harm came to her under those conditions his department would be absolved of responsibility.

  She took the express elevator to fifty-seven. Security since the attack, at least in the evenings when the building was mostly vacant, had been reduced to a few guards patrolling the upper floors, plus the battle android stationed 24/7 outside her suite. She agreed with Nick that neither the BA nor even scores of guards would be any match for a determined assassin. But she hadn’t ordered them removed. Their presence did seem to make workers feel safer.

  Arriving in her office, she scanned the well-stocked bar. Despite Nick’s advice, she’d been planning to have it removed. The bar was a constant reminder of her predecessor and now that she was settling into the job, she felt it important that her surroundings reflect her own style. She’d been meaning to call maintenance to make the change but just hadn’t gotten around to it.

  If my theory’s correct, thank goodness for procrastination.

  The shelves behind the bar housed more than two hundred beverages: vodkas and wines, gins and brandies, imported champagnes and colorful liqueurs. All were contained in glass bottles or labeled decanters, the connoisseur’s choice over temp-controlled pumps or disposables.

  She scanned the labels, looking for the WeBoys. If she was right, Witherstone had in some way recorded the sensitive intel and sequestered it with that bottle. Few people outside his family and close associates knew of his passion for the expensive vodka, which made it a relatively safe place to secure an emergency copy of the information. In the event something happened to him, one of those individuals – or perhaps a devilishly clever successor – would likely know where to look.

  Or my entire theory is utter nonsense, a byproduct of a runaway imagination.

  She finished the search. The shelves contained no WeBoys. Witherstone might have consumed the vodka. She could still be on the right track, however. Maybe he kept the bottle elsewhere.

  That idea made sense the more she thought about it. Considering that he was known to offer drinks to the many people he’d hosted in this office, it was logical he’d want to secure his expensive fave out of sight, reserving it for private indulgences or VIP occasions.

  Bel searched for signs of a hidden compartment. Finding nothing obvious, she felt around the bar for a hidden switch. Ten minutes later when Nick arrived, she was still looking.

  She ran her theory by him and they searched together. Another ten minutes went by without success.

  “Is that the same desk Witherstone had?” Nick asked.

  “Yes, but I already went through it.”

  “Maybe somebody swiped the bottle. Security and Intelligence people were all over this office right after the attack.”

  “I suppose it’s possible.” If that had happened, she hoped it was a matter of simple thievery and not the actions of a s
leeper agent eliminating evidence.

  “I’ll get a scanner from the tombs,” Nick said, heading for the door. “If there is a hidden compartment, we’ll find it.”

  “Wait!”

  An idea occurred as she recalled the teen’s words. “Mattia’s mother disapproved of her father spending a lot of money on WeBoys. He had a robot buy it for him offline so the transactions couldn’t be traced. And considering how his wife felt about his drinking, he wouldn’t have used their home drudge to make the purchases.”

  “You think that some robot here in the building has the bottle?”

  “I do. And I think I know which one.”

  She input her director’s code into the desk terminal and summoned the battle android. It lumbered into her office, its head doing a series of rapid 360-three sixty degree spins – standard threat-assessment mode.

  “Stand down,” she instructed.

  The hulking BA stopped rotating and faced its sensor-studded head toward Bel. It had often accompanied Witherstone as part of his bodyguard detail. Programmed to respond to the director’s orders – a function Bel had inherited – it easily have been dispatched to buy his exotic vodka. By using cash or one of the non-bank currencies, the purchases could have been kept off the grid.

  “I’m trying to locate a missing bottle called WeBoys,” she informed the android. “Do you have it in one of your storage compartments?”

  “I do not.” The robot’s trademark menacing voice gave the impression it was offended by her question.

  “Had you ever purchased such bottles for Director Witherstone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is the last bottle you bought for him?”

  “He threw it away.”