Exogenetic

by Michael S Nuckols

  “I do a lot of teleworking. Diane and I have a temporary office here on the island.”

  “Diane? Is she still banging you?”

  “Uh… No. She’s an employee. I divide my time between my startup and Cerenovo.”

  “Sounds like a nice gig. But, I’m guessing this is not a social call, seeing how you left me cock-blocked last time we met.”

  “It’s not that I’m not happy to see you,” he said, “I am. Things have been crazy and…”

  “One little date and then nothing? No phone-call? Most guys at least try to get a little sugar before they disappear into the night.”

  “I’m sorry. I do like you. It’s just…”

  If she had been standing her hands would have been on her hips. “Just what? Don’t like sushi? Too fishy for you? Are you gay?”

  “You don’t wash your hands enough.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “I don’t mean any offense, Fang. I’m just being honest.”

  “Well, that’s… Okay. I guess, considering… What do you want? My time is valuable.”

  He stammered, “I need an opinion. Some information. I’ve met someone in a virtual chatroom that knows a little too much about me. I’ve done IP traces… I’ve used some blackhat techniques to chase her down, but she seems to be a ghost.”

  “Have you tried asking her name?” she quipped, “Or is that too forward of you?”

  “She calls herself Beta.”

  Fang took the horn from her hair and began playing with it teasingly, mocking Ridley as they spoke. “Where are you chatting?”

  “Voyeur.com.”

  “Dirty little boy…. Ridley… I’m surprised. I thought you were just a little church mouse, but it’s always the quiet ones, you know. Dirty. Dirty. Dirty.”

  Ridley was curt. “I wouldn’t be so fast to judge.”

  “I’m sorry,” she cooed, “You do know that anonymity is the entire point of that website? I believe it’s in their terms and conditions.”

  “I think she might actually be a chatbot that has been programmed to mess with me.”

  “Oooh. That’s why you’re calling me… After how many months? You could’ve picked up the phone sooner, even if we are just ‘friends’ like you wanted.”

  “Fang, seriously. I just need to know. Have you programmed any chatbots for Voyeur?”

  She tried not to be huffy, but the irritation was evident in her voice. “Under U.S. law, a website must disclose if they use chatbots in their terms and conditions.”

  “Ukon didn’t.”

  “The website where Rex’s chatbot was housed was in China. They don’t fall under U.S. law. Chatbots are the rule in China. The government doesn’t want their people talking to each other. It’s easier to control them that way.”

  “Let’s assume Voyeur is not complying with U.S. law. How would I know I’m dealing with a chatbot?”

  “If we programmers are doing our job right, you’ll never know. Generally, you want to look for vague answers to questions that require several steps of analysis. Any specific answers will be information that is regurgitated from a web search. Sometimes it’s tough. We fool people all the time. I’m quite proud of that.”

  “Do you still claim to have nothing to do with Rex Bate’s chatbot?”

  She held up two fingers. “Honest engine, girl-scout. It wasn’t me. But I do steal tricks from the Chinese when I can. Their programming is quite good. And it helps to speak Mandarin. I chat with Chinese programmers sometimes. A little flirting and those geeks tell everything.”

  “I didn’t know you spoke Mandarin.”

  “I learned a little from my grandmother, just enough that I was able to continue studying it in college. You’d know that if we’d have gone on another date.”

  “We’ll go out again. I just have to get over some things…”

  “Some things? That much is obvious.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  Her tone changed; her voice became conciliatory. “Your comment about hand-washing doesn’t surprise me. You should see someone. A therapist might help. Lots of people have problems these days.”

  “I don’t need a therapist.”

  “Get real. You’ve got sores on your arms where you’ve rubbed the skin raw. You’re worried about germs when you’re doing self-harm? Please. You have a problem.”

  Ridley examined his skin. “You can see that through the camera?”

  “I saw it when we dated. And… There’s a spot of blood on your shirt.”

  Sven’s text message indicating that the lab would be ready in a few weeks did little to lift Ridley’s mood.

  Maybe Fang was right. A therapist might help him. Yet, it seemed too personal, too dangerous. Maybe he could confide in Fiona? She was a neurologist, after all. She had helped him before. Surely, she had gotten over what he had done?

  As his mind wandered, Ridley began scratching at his skin unconsciously. He felt warm fluid under his fingernail; he had drawn blood. Ridley went into the bathroom, tore off a piece of toilet paper, and blotted the scratch until the bleeding stopped.

  He had thrown away the therapist’s card that Dr. Stone had given him. He searched online for another. He could not bring himself to dial any of the numbers listed. “The visit might be cathartic. It might calm my nerves. I have to do it.”

  Online counseling occurred to him. Weldon’s website might help without the uncomfortable need for disclosure or meandering dialogues. Ridley navigated to the homepage. Images of happy people who presumably had once been sad flashed on the screen. Ridley was not sad. He was not like those people. He was smarter, more confident. He did not need to pin his emotions on his sleeve.

  Fiona remained his only option. She would understand.

  The gray walls of the waiting room seemed to close in on Ridley. A guard went to retrieve the sole criminal residing within. A second guard entered the waiting room and waved to him, “Come on back.”

  He passed through a metal detector, which beeped. The guard waved a wand over him which beeped when he reached Ridley’s chest. “Got anything metal there?”

  “It’s an auxiliary lung implant.”

  “Could you open your shirt?”

  Ridley was slightly embarrassed as he unbuttoned his shirt. The guard inspected the tubes exiting his chest with curiosity. “Okay.”

  Ridley sat at a table and watched as Fiona was led into the room opposite him. She sat down at the table; a wall of glass separated them. He forced a weak smile and tried to be cheerful. “How are you doing?”

  Fiona sneered at him. Hairline wrinkles were already forming at the corners of her eyes and mouth. “You’re wasting my time.”

  “I wanted to say that I’m sorry. I never expected things to go the way they did.”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “It was business. They offered you a deal to save your hide. You took it.”

  “I didn’t think they’d try to pin everything on you.”

  “The world wanted a scapegoat,” she said as she crossed her legs, “It should have been Rex Bates though. He did more to contribute to the botnet than I could have ever dreamed. Zedosoft’s research on AIs was decades ahead of anything that Yuri could have come up with, even back then. Everyone knows that Ukon replicated Rex’s personality with a chatbot for decades.”

  “I had hoped that was a rumor.”

  “I suspected it years ago, but I never really knew. Which is the real reason I’m in here. They haven’t found a way to put a dead man in jail — yet. I’m sure they’ll figure that out in time too.”

  He already knew the true answer to his question but wanted to gauge her response. “Have you been chatting with anyone online lately?”

  The question was unpleasant; Fiona’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not allowed. They won’t even let me send an email.”

  A guard tapped on her phone and giggled, as if she were in a room by herself. Ridley shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  “It’s still out there
,” he said, “I’m certain.”

  “What’s still out there?”

  “The botnet.”

  She bared her teeth. “So, you think your Predator was a bit of vaporware, huh?”

  “There are signs that it might simply have gone into hiding.”

  “You’re finally realizing that the Botnet was a little more complicated than you thought. It was more than a single piece of software that could be hunted.”

  Ridley slouched and stared at the tabletop.

  “It hurts to know that you might have failed. You’re not the hero you thought you were. You did not save the Second Information Age.”

  He jerked his head up. “I never said I saved anything. I never said that you created the botnet. I never said that we eliminated it. Other people made those claims.”

  “You’ve let people believe them. You plea-bargained to sell me out while becoming The Great Ridley Pierce, the man that saved the world through his programming prowess. I know better. The television networks adore you, but wait. They’ll turn. I know what you are. The public will figure it out soon enough.”

  “And what am I?” he said bitterly.

  “A fraud.”

  “You don’t have to be rude.”

  She examined her manicure. “You don’t know what to do next. Do you?”

  He sighed loudly and ran both hands down his cheeks, smoothing the overgrowth of stubble. He wanted to discuss his problem, to seek Fiona’s advice, but he could not bring himself to tell her. He considered pushing his sleeves up but did not.

  Fiona’s eyes darted back and forth. “It’s not so easy is it? Not so easy to run your own company and deal with employees. Make decisions. You not only have to worry about yourself, but you have to make payroll. And with your lifestyle… That ridiculous mansion. That’s the most garish thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “You know about that?”

  “Who doesn’t? Seattle is a small town, especially now. You’ve only proven that you’re nouveau riche.”

  Ridley stared at the floor. “I shouldn’t have come here. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  Rather than twist the proverbial dagger, Fiona removed it from his back. She tried to be conciliatory. “I’m in here for what I did. I own it. But you’ve always been starry-eyed. You think that you can sing kumbaya and things will go your way. Starting a company is cutthroat. We live in a world where a few monopolies control the government, real estate, transportation, power, fuel, food… Whether we want to admit it or not, they want to patent our bodies and control our brains. You can’t work in a vacuum. Sometimes you have to play their game.”

  He searched for a response.

  She whispered, “When I got here, I literally wanted to murder you. I started asking the guards if they knew of someone I could pay. None of them obliged. I thought about nerve agent, but it’s hard to come by these days. They bombed all of the factories in Russia.”

  Fiona paused to gauge his reaction. A chill went down Ridley’s spine. He began to see the truth behind his former mentor. “If given the opportunity, you would have finished me off. Wouldn’t you?”

  Fiona brushed a spot of lint from her jumpsuit. “No, no… I suppose not. I’m still fond of you in spite of what you did to me. The truth is that Cerenovo needs you. Your work placed us in a unique position that no other company has. We can break Ukon’s monopoly and form our own.”

  Ridley began to suspect that Fiona was manipulating him, trying to provoke a response. “Are you getting your treatments?”

  “No. While I spend my ten years in here, I’m going to age quite naturally. Fortunately, my mind remains as strong as ever. My little Korean doctor should be waiting on me when I return to civilization.”

  Ridley tried to be compassionate. “Time will pass quickly.”

  She leaned forward. “Speaking of time, why are you here wasting mine? It can’t all be guilt.”

  He stammered, “Diane and I are working on a project. A neural processor.”

  “How is Miss Goody-Gum-Drops anyway?”

  “Her husband is dead and her daughter has autism. She’s having a rough time.”

  “No doubt you’ve made it worse for her. You didn’t give her a shred of credit. Yet another man telling a woman how to do things. I know all about that, but I never expected it from you.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  Her eyes cut him like a razor. “You think your hands are clean. But there is blood on them. Diane has always seen what you really are even if she can’t walk away from you.”

  Ridley stood. “I’m not sure why I came here.”

  “Guilt?”

  “I think I’ll be going now.”

  Fiona’s tone changed. “No. Wait. I’m sorry. Please.”

  Ridley turned to face her. He waited expectantly.

  “You can do one thing for me,” she said, “Put some flowers on Edmunds grave.”

  Ridley nodded. The guard opened the door, leaving Fiona sitting alone in the dismal room.

  Outside, a heavy rain-shower fell. He rushed to his car, hopped into the back seat, and instructed it to drive home. The trees became a blur as the windshield wipers swiped back and forth. Ridley pondered what she had said. Would Fiona have killed him? The neurologist had given no clues to the identity of Beta. If Fiona was innocent, who was toying with him online?

  Chapter Eight

  The city park was filled with children running and laughing on a field of emerald grass. Many appeared to be orphans cared for by adopted parents. Diane stood next to Dr. Ortiz as they gently pushed their two children back and forth on swings. Joshua was three years older than Kelly. Neither child smiled, both gazing at the leaves in the trees without any acknowledgment that the other child was present. “Dr. Ortiz, thank-you for meeting me today.”

  “Call me Juan. It’s no problem. I was going to be in the city anyway.”

  Juan adjusted the brim of his Mariner’s baseball cap. An ice cream truck parked in the distance and the children flocked to it. “Joshua insists upon wearing this t-shirt every day.”

  The shirt was adorned with a cartoonish t-rex with the caption ‘I need a hug’ in a thought bubble.

  He pushed Joshua more slowly and then stopped. The child did not notice. “He wore this t-shirt when his mother… After the collapse, he wouldn’t get dressed until I found that shirt. Later, I had to go to the store and buy… well, steal, all they had left. Once he outgrew them, I had shirts printed to match. I’ve got a bunch in a box, sized all the way up to extra-large, if he grows that big.”

  A lawn mowing bot paused and powered down when a boy ran in front of it to get a softball. The child ran back to his friends and the bot quietly resumed its work. Joshua took notice; his gaze followed the bot as it buzzed away.

  “He’s a handsome little boy,” Diane said, “Is he always this quiet?”

  Juan smiled at the compliment bashfully. “He only speaks when he needs to. But he does communicate. I always know what he needs.”

  “That’s how Kelly is. I had almost given up on her talking when she finally said ‘Momma’. It was like she already knew the word but was simply waiting for the right moment to say it.”

  The doctor nodded knowingly. “He finally spoke when he got stung by a bee.”

  The swings creaked as Diane pushed Kelly higher. Diane watched Kelly’s every movement. “Our children don’t fit the classic autism models, do they?”

  “Not really, but I’m not sure there is a classic model. Every autistic child is a little different. But, this particular type of autism seems entirely new.”

  She paused and turned to him. “New indeed. How many children know prime numbers at twenty-months?”

  He stopped pushing Joshua on the swing momentarily. “What?”

  Diane explained what Kelly had done. “Has Joshua done anything unusual like that?”

  “No. But, I have seen him dividing piles of sand again and again. I took him to the beach once and he was overwhelme
d. He just screamed. We had to leave.”

  “I don’t understand what’s happening to her. How does she think?”

  Dr. Ortiz took Joshua’s hand and led him to a picnic table. Diane fed Kelly a snack as they chatted. Joshua played with twigs, arranging them in orderly groups.

  Juan brushed some fallen leaves from the table. “A scan of my patients found another twenty-two children here in the Seattle area, all of whom survived the plague, with the same gene. Most are heterozygous for the anomaly; only Kelly and Joshua are homozygous.”

  “And beyond Seattle?”

  “I’ve reached out to colleagues. There aren’t a lot of us left. It’s a delicate issue to ask about. It takes time to search for matching genes.”

  “Is gathering accurate genetic data possible now? I mean, how many are still using compromised software?”

  “Unfortunately, a few refuse to use the new version because it hasn’t been tested enough. Which is why I’m proceeding cautiously. There are a few old-school analog methods. Immunoassays and gel electrophoresis primarily. Those results would be enough to confirm that any data has been tampered with. Eventually, I’ll publish a paper to warn other geneticists.”

  “Eventually?”

  “My reputation is on the line. I can’t release a story like this without absolute proof. Your idea about the AI is intriguing, but… I’m struggling. Occam’s razor says a government did this.”

  “How could a government keep something this big a secret for decades?”

  “Social engineering. Convince enough people it’s for the common good and they’ll march along like good soldiers. It would be easy to discredit anyway. That’s why any publication on this has to be based on verifiable information,” Juan said, “That code infiltrated many different genetics labs. They hid major changes to the human genome for decades.”

  “And the influenza virus? Do you think it was engineered?”

  “Even now, there is wide disagreement over whether the pathogen was engineered or natural,” Juan said, “Maybe someone predicted the common flu would evolve into what we saw and genetic engineering was the government’s plan to thwart it. Maybe it was an engineered virus that escaped a lab. Think about how careless lab practices can be sometimes. Ebola escaped the lab in Maryland not once but twice? Maybe they never planned to release the Bolivian flu at all.”