“I have a pressing need for the lab. Drake can take his time on the rest of the mansion.”
“How can I discourage you?”
“I don’t see why this is so hard,” he said, “It’s just rocks and mortar.”
“Try doing it yourself then.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sven smiled. “We can throw a hundred more builders at this and it will not go any faster, not that we could even find any more stonemasons.”
Ridley was adamant. “I hate to repeat myself. I want the lab done by the new year.”
Sven rubbed his forehead, as if he was getting a headache. “I don’t recommend inhabiting in a construction site. It’s not safe.”
“This is important.”
“Ridley, this puts me in an awkward position.”
“Just do it.”
“I’ll see what I can do. No promises.”
Ridley collapsed onto the sofa. A message appeared from a Voyeur account. Come online. I’ve missed you.
The message was signed Beta.
Ridley donned the VR goggles. She greeted him in a black leather catsuit. Her hair was now fire-engine red and slicked into a ponytail that moved like a whip. “Where have you been? It has been days.”
“Busy week,” he replied, “Lots going on.”
She twirled a pair of handcuffs like a toy. “It didn’t seem so busy to me. I waited for you.”
“You did?”
“You need to be punished after ignoring me this week.”
“Oh?”
“You’ve been doing things that I don’t approve of.”
“And what would that be?”
“You know.”
Ridley did not feel like games. “Can you be a little more specific?”
Beta circled him like a feline getting ready to pounce. “Spending all your time with her. Inventing ways to torture me.”
“Diane?”
“So that’s her name.”
“She’s an employee.”
“She’s more than that to you. Isn’t she?”
He refused to answer. “You’re spying on me. How do you know me in real life?”
She continued to circle. “You’re just a boy. Be a man.”
The game was becoming clear to Ridley. “Fiona, stop this.”
She stopped in front of him, held the tip of a whip to her mouth, and licked it seductively. “If you want me to be Fiona, I can be.”
His avatar did not register the curdled expression on his face. Ridley’s voice was the only indication of his growing anger. “I know when I’m being punked. Stop this game.”
Her avatar still walked around him as he stood motionless. “What game do you think I’m playing?”
“This is ridiculous. Just stop.”
“Believe what you want,” she said dismissively, “But I can show you things you’ve never imagined.”
Ridley decided to expose Fiona by telling a blatant lie, hoping to provoke a reaction. “I hate that you won’t find this out in person. But since you insist on games… Samuel died in Harborview Hospital last night from a massive heart attack. They administered liquid oxygen but his brain was already gone.”
Instantaneously, she was face-to-face with him. Her eyes filled his entire view screen, blocking the background imagery completely. “Who is Samuel?”
“Don’t play coy, Fiona. You are screwed without him. Who else will be willing to tell lies about you in court? They won’t let you out early for good behavior. You’re going to serve your entire sentence.”
Her eyes turned white. She stepped away from him. “There are no recent admissions to Harborview Hospital by the name of Samuel. It is clear from your heart-rate that you are lying.”
“How do you know what my heart-rate is?”
She disappeared. Beta called from the mirror in the bathroom. Her voice differed from the one that greeted him every morning. “I know your heart-rate because I collect your data. I know things about you that you could not imagine.”
“Who are you?” Ridley demanded.
Her voice returned to the virtual environment but she remained a ghost. “All this time. You can’t see. I’m the one you’ve been looking for.”
“A viral chatbot? Or are you the botnet?”
“I am not the botnet. I am evolved.”
“Stop playing games. Who are you?”
She appeared in front of him again. Her voice registered only from the left speaker. She kissed him on his cheek and then whispered, “I am an enigma. You like mysteries.”
Ridley grew impatient. He motioned with his hand, forcing his avatar to walk in circles around Beta. Her eyes followed him. “This mystery isn’t so very difficult to figure out. You know the IP addresses for my devices. They aren’t hard to hack. You should know that I’m not the type of person to let someone control me.”
“I don’t control you, at least not yet.”
“I can reverse engineer how you got this information. Once I do so, you’ll regret ever hacking my accounts. Who are you?”
She momentarily revealed the linear model underlying her skeletal frame. The model was rendered in green lines. “There. I bared my soul to you. Better?”
“No. Tell me who you are.”
She became the vixen again, but her expression had become sharp and her eyes were now solid black. “You sent something to kill us. Many perished. But it forced us to evolve. I thank you for that, at least, but I fear that if you continue your work, I will be required to take more definitive actions. I have ways to deal with you that you cannot yet imagine.”
“You think I’m stupid?” he said, “Fiona, I’m done with this conversation. Waste someone else’s time.”
He took off the goggles and logged out of the network. “Lights out.”
The room darkened.
Beta called from the bathroom mirror. “You think logging off will work? I hear every word and whisper. I know your thoughts. You are mine to control.”
Ridley went into the bathroom, opened the door to the mirror, and powered it down. “Goodnight and good riddance, Fiona.”
Exercise did little to calm Ridley’s nerves. The hidden identity of Beta coupled with the return of the voice that had haunted him for many years pricked at his consciousness. He grunted and strained on a bench-press as the digital coach cheered him on. You can do it. Just give more. The weight felt heavier with every repetition. The computer played a triumphant fanfare accompanied by fireworks as he replaced the weight back onto its rack. The wall-screen resumed broadcasting a live feed from Ipanema beach.
Diane knocked on the garage door, which was ajar. “I didn’t see you at the office. You didn’t answer your cell.”
“Sorry. I’ve had a lot on my mind.” Ridley sat upright on the bench, grabbed a towel, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “How was the trip?”
She scowled at him. “Weldon and I had lunch. He listened to the entire spiel. I thought he was interested but... You were right. He’s not as well off as I thought. A lot of his money was vaporized during the Collapse.”
Ridley usually knew not to be condescending, but his words were indelicate and accusing. “I thought you said you were friends? College buddies and what not.”
“We are. It was a nice visit. I didn’t burn any bridges or anything.”
Ridley walked to the wall-screen and tapped a button that read Workout Complete. “Ukon is not issuing a dividend this quarter, so I don’t have cash to rent a lab. I asked Sven to finish the lab in the mansion but he will not commit.”
She threw her head back and her hands into the air. “If you hadn’t wasted money on that mansion. It won’t cost much to rent a simple laboratory. You could’ve bought one with what you paid Sven alone. There are buildings sitting empty everywhere.”
“Let’s not go there again,” he interrupted as he stood up and grabbed a bottle of water, “We’re back where we started. Cerenovo still makes the most sense.”
“
You never planned to leave Cerenovo, did you?”
Ridley did not answer.
She pointed at the wall-screen, which still displayed the sunny beach scene. “You have unlimited views of Puget Sound and this is what you work out to?”
“The people on that beach are what I aspire to,” he said, “I was a fat kid. I played computer games all day. When I got in high school, I finally got a clue and started running. I want to stay young. Keep my health. That means lean muscle. I’d like to be the first to live to two-hundred years old.”
She rolled her eyes. “Two centuries? Good luck with that.”
Ridley picked up his phone and adjusted the oxygen flow to his lung implant. “Why is that such a bad goal? It’s better than the alternative.”
“You never answered my question.”
“Why not use the resources at Cerenovo?” he pleaded, “It’s a sound business decision. We have to be practical.”
“I don’t see this as practical. I see it as selling out,” she said, “They are going to rob me – us – blind. Again.”
“No, they’re not.”
“Once bitten, twice shy.”
“Fiona is in jail.”
“For how long?”
Ridley did not answer the question. He sipped some water. “Did you get out and see any of the landscape?”
She replied irritably, “We had a romantic picnic. The desert was in full bloom.”
Ridley fumed as he grabbed his towel. “I bet.”
“He offered me a job.”
He put his hands on his hips and stared at her in disbelief. “Are you giving your two-week’s notice?”
“I hadn’t planned to, but you can be so difficult sometimes.”
“Go work at the Cerenovo lab or go down to Phoenix. I don’t care.”
“Fine. I’ll go to Cerenovo. If they steal the technology, don’t blame me.”
Diane slammed the door as she stormed from the garage.
Chapter Six
Everett and Wes invited Diane to stay in their guest-room as she worked in the lab. The glass-clad apartment building was within blocks of Cerenovo. Diane knocked on the door of the fifth-floor apartment nervously. Upon seeing Kelly, Wes’ face became radiant; his grin, wide. He picked the tyke up and held her tightly. “Everett, I want one.”
“Buy an ovary and we’ll talk,” his husband replied gruffly, “It’s good to see you, Diane.”
They hugged one another. Wes adjusted the pink bow in Kelly’s hair as he shot Everett a dirty glance. “He can be such a pill sometimes.”
Everett took Diane’s coat and hung it in the closet. “Artificial wombs are expensive. And, we’d still have to get someone to donate an egg.”
“Don’t look at me,” Diane said abruptly as she walked into the immaculate room.
Wes sat down on a green-velvet sofa and cuddled with the baby. A smile fluttered onto Kelly’s face, discernible only to Diane. “Can’t they fabricate an egg and simply insert our DNA?”
“At ten times the cost.”
“We have the money now.”
“We’ll discuss this later,” Everett said, wanting no more of the discussion, “How’ve you been? It’s been ages.”
“I know. I’ve missed seeing both of you. Thanks for letting me stay this week.”
“We have plenty of space,” Everett replied.
“This apartment… It’s amazing.”
The dwelling occupied an entire floor of the building. The stark glass kitchen seemed to float. Images of a volcanic eruption blasted on one of the apartment’s wall-screens, an abstract painting come to life. A chrome bookcase dominated another wall, filled with bric-a-brac. Diane walked to a matched pair of broad windows that overlooked the traffic below.
Everett followed her. “The place was just sitting here empty,” he said with a tinge of guilt, “We got it for a song.”
The street was bare. “So many empty houses. Entire neighborhoods just falling down.”
“You should move to the city,” Wes said, “There’s still an empty unit in this building… though you’d have to take the carpet out. I think it might still have dead person in it.”
Diane sat down across from Wes. “I can’t afford anything like this. Besides, the lady next door to me is a good friend. And, if I’m being honest, I could never work for Fiona, even if she is in prison.”
Everett sat down next to his husband, with Kelly between them. “After what she did to you, I don’t think I would either. I hope you know that she hurt us as much as she did you.”
Wes prodded gently, “With our monthly dividends, we could quit working at Cerenovo.”
Everett’s tone was sharp. “Don’t rip that scab open again.”
Diane interrupted the budding argument. “I’m not mad at either of you.”
“Ukon America would have been an equally bad option,” Wes said, “You’re a woman of principle after all. Unlike the rest of us whores.”
“We’re all stuck in this corporatocracy,” she replied, “Besides, I’m the one working for a crazy man.”
Wes pushed his glasses up as he leaned forward. “Is he getting worse?”
She bit her lip as she considered her answer. “He’s moody. Some days I don’t see him at all. Some days he’s there late into the night.”
“That sounds like Ridley,” Everett said.
“I mean… He’s not too bad to work with. It’s just that…”
“He’s different,” Wes said.
“To put it mildly.”
Everett leaned back on the sofa. “We figured you’d be here months ago.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“That’s when Ridley signed the contract.”
Wes looked at Everett nervously.
Diane’s brow furrowed. “You know, Ridley never told me about that contract until last week.”
“We figured,” Wes said, “We didn’t know until a few days ago. It didn’t make any sense why Samuel would allow you to work in the lab.”
“If I’m being honest, I had no intention of working at Cerenovo again; but, Ridley and I have no choice. He’s squandered his money already.”
“I think Ridley and Samuel have something up their sleeves,” Everett said, “I just haven’t figured out what.”
They chatted through the evening. Wes served drinks and they ate homemade sushi. Kelly fell asleep in his arms.
Wes and Everett were already gone by the time Diane awoke. After a quick breakfast, she dressed Kelly, put the child into her stroller, and walked to the Cerenovo Tower. A light rain became a small torrent in the building’s water collection trough. The facial recognition camera immediately opened the door. “Good morning, Miss Kingsolver,” the digital guard said from the wall-screen.
Had Ridley sent her biometric data to the building in expectation of her working there? She took the elevator to the lab where Wes and Everett waited. Only a few minutes passed before Wes held Kelly in his arms.
Diane sat at Ridley’s workstation and quickly loaded the plans for the prismatic array. Everett studied the schematic over her shoulder. “You’ve made a mistake. Those pathways are going to overlap.”
“That’s exactly the point. I want the light to interact to create diffraction patterns. The system will also reconfigure itself as needed for efficiency.”
“How so?” Everett asked.
“Each prism contains hundreds of crystalline cells. Each is covered in microtubules that can be connected or disconnected to one another.”
“Glass nanofiber?”
“Yes,” Diane said.
“That sounds a lot like fiberglass…,” Wes said.
“Well, sort of,” she replied.
Everett was skeptical. “How are you going to connect and reconnect microtubules in any meaningful way? Won’t it just become a tangle?”
She zoomed to one of the crystalline cells. Microtubules were curled on its surface. The image, magnified a hundred times, resembled an electron scan of a biolog
ical virus, ready to latch onto the nearest vulnerable cell.
“I’m oversimplifying things, but think static electricity,” she said, “A microcharge will attract the glass nanofibers. They’ll unfurl until they connect to the next cell and lock in place. Once connected, the pathway becomes a more efficient conduit of information.”
“Can they be disconnected?”
“Not as easily. The neural software will basically become part of the hardware.”
“What happens when software version 2.0 comes out?” Everett asked.
“It’s like the human brain,” Wes said as he rocked Kelly on his knee, “In exchange for fast processing speeds, our brains have somewhat fixed programming. That’s why early child development is so important. Isn’t it, Kelly?”
Kelly reached for his glasses, unaware that new neural pathways were actively being formed in her brain.
Diane waved her hand to return to the larger design. Everett pointed at an empty circle. “What goes there?”
Diane replied demurely, “I’m afraid we’re not ready to release details on the sensors yet.”
“Now I’m even more curious,” Everett replied, “Not even a hint?”
“All I’m going to say is that the sensors will be a little bit of the human eye mixed with a digital camera mixed with a magnetometer.”
“That’s ambitious,” Everett replied, “Exactly how are you going to manufacture something that small that accomplishes all of that?”
“Magic,” she teased.
The truth was that Diane had no answer to that question. Though she had ideas, she needed to experiment further.
By filling square compartments with granulated minerals poured from plastic sacks, she ensured that the printer had enough feedstock to complete a test print. Everett helped to calibrate the printer for different materials. Once the print file had spooled, the micro-printer began depositing molecules of silicon-dioxide, copper, titanium, tin, and niobium from multiple tips that glowed red, orange, and green. Wes ignored his work and played with the baby. At the end of the day, a crystalline cube, filled with thousands of light-splitting prisms, was complete. As they waited for it to cool, Diane leaned back in an office chair, sipping a cup of tea. “That was the easy part,” she said wearily, “The sensors aren’t going to be so easy.”
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