Exogenetic

by Michael S Nuckols

  “Possibly…”

  “People deserve to know,” she said, “We need to take this to the authorities.”

  Ridley stood and began pacing back and forth. His voice echoed in the concrete room. “Who specifically? The police? FBI? What if the authorities were the ones behind this?”

  Diane flashed the two doctors’ research onto the wall-screen. “This was genocide. We release the information publicly everywhere that we can. They can’t stop it from spreading.”

  “Are you so certain?” he said, “During World War II, the German people were kept in the dark about the holocaust while the government actively killed millions. The population was fed lies about Jews going to work camps or retirement centers. If we’re uncovering an international conspiracy, they have a counter story at the ready. We still don’t know who is behind this. Ukon may only be one piece.”

  “Communication is better today. It’s harder to keep stories like this hidden.”

  “Is it?”

  “John would’ve known if it was anything as involved as the holocaust.”

  “Why would John have known? Don’t take this the wrong way, but sending soldiers to war has always been the way to rid the world of excess population. Soldiers are pawns. And now, the rich don’t need them. They don’t need slaves. They have drones. They’ll soon have AI-controlled armies.”

  Diane had no counter-argument.

  Kelly crawled into her mother’s lab; Diane stroked the girl’s hair as she debated what to do. “I’m not sitting on this information.”

  Diane called the Seattle police. A detective with salt-and-pepper hair appeared on videophone. Diane explained what they had uncovered about Dr. Ortiz’ car accident. “Is this a prank?” the man replied.

  “No, sir. I’m very serious. If you give me your address, I can send you documents…”

  “Listen here, we got plenty to do without you two playing Miss Marple. The doctor’s car braked too late to miss the deer. Doctor Ortiz’ car hit some gravel, went off the road, and rolled. He wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. This was not attempted murder. This was not sabotage. It was an accident. Case closed.”

  “You didn’t listen to a word I said,” Diane complained.

  “I listened,” the detective said, “I just don’t buy it.”

  At that, the detective disconnected the call.

  “So much for the police,” Diane said.

  “What next?” Ridley asked.

  Diane posted the files onto Facebook, Reddit, Texxed, and Instagram. She sent the documents to a reporter at The Washington Post and another at the New York Times “The more people that see these, the better.”

  An hour passed. She received no responses. Her posts sank to the bottom of every list. “I don’t understand why this is being downvoted?”

  “They probably control the algorithms,” he said, “Maybe bots are downvoting it. There are a hundred ways to manipulate even the most honest of systems.”

  Diane studied the comments mocking her posts. Were they from real people? Or more chatbots?

  The quiet basement felt like a tomb. The heavy iron door separated them only temporarily from the world. Diane tapped her fingers on the desk. “That science reporter…”

  Ridley looked at her quizzically.

  She searched her phone’s contact information. “What was her name?”

  “Who?”

  “The one that did the story on me a few years ago. That stupid pinup bit… She’ll understand.”

  Diane thumbed through her contacts until she found Christina Lewis’ name and photo. She called the reporter’s number but the call went to voice mail. The message had been professionally produced with sound effects and background music. “Hi. You’ve reached Seattle’s Number One Science and Technology Reporter. Leave a message after the tone and I’ll get back to you.”

  Diane left a brief message about a scoop and then disconnected the call. She emailed the files from the two doctors to the reporter. Ridley walked upstairs. The plywood door creaked as the wind blew outside. Diane scooped Kelly up and followed him. They stood at the glass like fish in an aquarium. The water beyond was choppy as a winter gale howled.

  He pondered the storm outside. “Maybe I should go online again? See what Beta has to say.”

  “What good would that do?”

  Diane checked her phone. There were no messages. She tried calling Christina again and reached voicemail a second time.

  The day grew to a close. Their truth bomb had fizzled. “I guess we’ll be going,” Diane said.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I should ask you the same.”

  “I mean… Will you be safe?”

  “I’ll cut the circuit breakers again. If they’re going to do something to me, they’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”

  Ridley arose before sunrise and logged into his Voyeur.com account. The virtual chat rooms were empty except for a few lone men hiding in corners. Beta was not present. His email account was empty. He ate a bowl of cereal. Alone in the kitchen with Sandy at his feet, he sat before the keyboard pondering what to do. Yesterday’s coffee sat on the counter. He sipped the day-old brew, found it to be bitterly strong, and added spoonful after spoonful of sugar. Ridley stood and stretched. He gulped the coffee down. The wall-screen flickered.

  “What now?”

  The infinity symbol flashed before his eyes and disappeared.

  The feeling of dizziness was one that he remembered from the day his parents had died. He fell to the floor as his body convulsed.

  The woman’s voice, the one that always came to him, screamed at him violently. “You must remember. Where you are. When you are. They will control your life if you allow.”

  The voice was one that Ridley knew well. She had spoken to him during the Collapse. Hers was not the voice of the Beta, but one that was within him, one that haunted his days. He had known her for years.

  How many voices were in his head now?

  “Beta is not the one you seek,” she said, “She is not me. You must remember. I control all that you see but not all that you do.”

  His vision was blurry. He tried to sit upright but could not. He was not sure if he spoke out loud or in his head. “Riddles. You speak only in riddles.”

  Sandy whined and licked his hand but Ridley did not move. He lay motionless on the kitchen floor.

  Chapter Twelve

  Diane dressed and then dialed Ridley’s phone. It rang several times and then went to voicemail. She tried a second time with the same result. “Ridley, where are you?”

  She put Kelly into her stroller and walked along the decrepit pavement until she reached the aging home. Anxious that something was wrong, she knocked on the door. “Ridley?”

  The rear sliding doors were unlocked. His hand was barely visible. He lay on the floor of the kitchen. She ran to him.

  He lay in a fetal position, groggy; his eyes were glazed. “What happened?”

  He tried to stand but could not. She helped him to sit at the kitchen table.

  “I’m calling an ambulance.”

  “No,” he said, “Don’t. It’s too dangerous there. No hospital. I just need some water.”

  Diane reluctantly put away her phone and filled his empty coffee cup. He composed himself and sat down. He gulped the water down and then pushed the cup away.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, his words broken, “I was going to work on some code… And then I was on the floor.”

  “You passed out?”

  “I must have. I kept hearing a voice.”

  “Whose voice?”

  “The one that warns me.”

  “Beta?”

  “No. The other.”

  “Where’s your first aid kit?” she asked.

  “The car has one.”

  Diane brought the kit into the kitchen, rummaged through it, and pulled out an automated diagnostic tool. She put a sensor on his finger and the system lit
up with data. He had no fever. The health indicator showed that his temperature was normal. His heart rate and breathing were elevated; his blood’s oxygen content was at one-hundred percent saturation. He blinked his eyes as his vision adjusted. A light on the monitor turned green.

  Ridley’s mind raced. “It had to be Fiona.”

  Diane did not understand. “What?”

  “Fiona threatened me when I visited her.”

  Diane was incredulous. “When did you visit Fiona?”

  He leaned forward on the desk and cradled his head in his hands. His words remained jumbled. “I didn’t want to tell you… I knew you wouldn’t like it. But it wasn’t Fiona. She has no access to computers.”

  “She doesn’t need a computer. She can pay people,” Diane argued.

  “Can you get me a soda?”

  She pulled one out of the refrigerator. As Ridley drank it, Diane paced the room, trying to tease out what had happened. “We need to get you to a doctor. If Fiona poisoned you...”

  “I’m feeling better now. I don’t need a doctor.”

  Ridley stood and went to the cabinet and pulled out some potato chips. He ate one and put the rest of the package aside before taking another sip of the soda. He staggered back to the kitchen table and sat down. Sandy jumped onto his lap protectively. He stroked her ears as the dog wagged her tail gently.

  “Ridley, you’re going to the hospital.”

  “No, it’s not safe there.”

  “You might die otherwise.”

  He put his hand on his chest. The lung implant whirred steadily as his heart raced. Ridley took a deep breath. “I’ll be fine. I’m feeling better already.”

  He drank more soda. Kelly walked up to Ridley and began petting Sandy. The dog seemed to bridge the two. Kelly gently stroked the dog’s coat. Sandy hopped down. Kelly found a spot in the corner, sat down with a plop, and waited until Sandy came to her and licked her face.

  Diane sat next to Ridley and spoke in a soft voice. “If Fiona was trying to poison you, you might not have long.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “She would never kill me. But… we’d better check the new lab. Those files. If someone broke in…”

  “First, the hospital.”

  Ridley remained recalcitrant. “The lab needs a security system,” he said, “Video. And a front door.”

  He closed his eyes.

  Diane was resolute. She reached under his arm. “Come on. You’re going to the clinic.”

  He was dizzy again. She caught him. She pulled him to the garage and helped him get inside the car. Diane scooped Kelly up and put her in the back seat of the sedan between the two adults. “Bainbridge Island clinic.”

  The charging cable released and the car pulled out of the garage.

  The nurse ran medical diagnostics; the results displayed on the wall-screen. She placed his arm into the cuff of a bot.

  “Is this necessary?” he asked

  Ridley flinched as the machine pricked his arm and drew a blood sample.

  “Your wife…”

  “Diane is not my wife.”

  “She said you might have been poisoned,” the nurse replied, “we need to get a sample.”

  The nurse disappeared. Ridley waited impatiently until Dr. Stone entered the room. “Ridley, how are you feeling?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  The doctor listened to Ridley’s heart and then inspected the data on the wall-screen. “If I had to guess, it’s related to your lung damage.”

  “I was not exercising. I was in my kitchen,” Ridley argued, “I’m able to jog a mile a day with the implant. The implant was working fine.”

  “Maybe you had a panic attack? Did you take the drugs I gave you?”

  “I only took one. I haven’t taken any more since then.”

  The nurse posted the toxicological results which flashed onto the wall-screen. “His blood’s clean,” she said, “Though his blood sugar is a little low.”

  The doctor nodded and the nurse instructed the bot to administer an IV containing dextrose and a sedative.

  “What happened to him?” Diane asked.

  “He’s in no immediate danger, but I want an MRI. This might be some sort of brain injury. You need to go into the city.”

  Ridley’s eyes opened wide. “The lung implant has metal components. I can’t sit in an MRI.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Dr. Stone said, “They place a shield over the implant.”

  Ridley turned pale as they entered Harborview. He sat nervously next to Diane and Kelly. “I have to leave.”

  “Sit down,” she said.

  The nurse called his name and he went into a small room. Ridley took off his clothes and put on a hospital gown. In another room, the crescent-shaped scanner waited. Ridley lay on the gurney and waited while a technician covered his chest with a heavy composite shield. The technician disappeared and the lights in the room dimmed. The machine sounded like a CD spinning in its cradle, the high-pitched whirring almost painful. The technician said, “Please count backwards from 10.”

  Ridley did as the woman asked. “10… 9… 8…”

  She asked Ridley a riddle. She asked him questions about high school. He did a simple math problem. All the while, the machine whirred. The test lasted twenty minutes.

  Ridley dressed and waited nervously with Diane and Kelly. Doctor Stone appeared on a video-screen. “Your diagnostics are normal. I think you might simply have been dehydrated or had a panic attack.”

  “It wasn’t a panic attack. And I wasn’t dehydrated,” Ridley argued, “Something happened to me.”

  The phone call ended.

  “All that time spent and none of them have an answer. Something happened to me,” he said.

  “Whatever happened to you left no evidence. Maybe the hospital can uncover something that Dr. Stone missed.”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “No one said that you were,” Diane replied.

  “Not today.”

  Ridley leaned forward and put his head between his legs. He finally sat upright. “How? How did they do it?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  “It had to be Beta,” he said, “She controls more than we think.”

  “A machine can’t hack a person. The only thing networked is your lung implant and... Wait. Was it working?”

  “Yes. Of course it was. The fan was running the entire time.”

  “The entire time?” Diane asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It was on automatic mode? You didn’t control it from your phone.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  Diane had a realization. “Ridley, you were not exercising. There was no need for you to have extra oxygen. The fan shouldn’t have been running.”

  The realization occurred to both simultaneously. “It’s the glucose engine,” he said, “Someone hacked it.”

  “It burned all the glucose in your blood until you passed out.”

  “Beta tried to kill me,” he said.

  “Ridley… Take a deep breath. I want you to focus.”

  Ridley put his hands over his ears; a moment of anxiety outwardly expressed. “I can’t.”

  His pained expression was like those of war veterans that Diane had run into on the street corners of Rochester as a child. A tinge of insanity filled his eyes.

  “What else do you know about Beta?” Diane demanded.

  “She said she’s in Poland. I tried to figure out who she was. Voyeur is designed to thwart any attempt at tracking people on it. She hides behind an avatar, behind firewalls. Her voice is masked.”

  “We need to find out who is behind that avatar.”

  “She knows everything about me… about you even. She knows everything that we’ve been doing.”

  “Why would you go someplace like that?”

  He could not look Diane in the eyes. “I have to check out of reality at times. It’s an escape.”

  “How long?”

  “A
few months…”

  “Is that why you and Fang broke up?”

  “No.”

  “You can’t go there again.”

  His mouth dropped open. “But I have to.”

  Diane tried to understand. Maybe Weldon had been right about online addiction? Could her old friend provide any insights?

  “I just need some time to myself,” he said, “I don’t need you mothering me. I feel better.”

  His implant whirred in his chest.

  “You feel better because they gave you dextrose. The implant is already burning through it. Your blood sugar is going to drop and you’ll be on the floor again.”

  He looked at her dazedly.

  “Come on,” she said, “We need to get to the tower. Wes and Everett can help.”

  Wes exclaimed in glee upon seeing Kelly. “Oohhhh! There’s my baby girl.”

  He scooped Kelly up in his arms, hugged her, and kissed her on the forehead.

  Everett looked up from his work in surprise. “What brings you two to the city together?”

  “My implant has been hacked.”

  “Hacked? How?” Everett asked.

  “That’s what we need to figure out.”

  Diane left Kelly with Wes in the basement cantina while Everett joined them in the lab. After a technician had removed the lung implant, Everett examined it under a microscope. The image was broadcast on the wall-screen for Ridley and Diane to watch. Everett focused on a small microscopic segment. “This is where the glucose is extracted from the bloodstream. It’s transported by these microtubules to a burner that pulls oxygen out of the air.”

  Everett zoomed the camera closer. Ridley stood and pointed to a spot on the screen. “What is that?”

  Everett paused. A structure seemed out of place. “The new design has only a Bluetooth connection. We designed it that way on purpose.”

  Everett zoomed the camera in further. “This implant has Wi-Fi capability, like the implants did before the Collapse.”

  “Where was it manufactured?” Diane asked.

  Everett zoomed in on a serial number. “Tacoma. The new robotic factory. Someone must have have hacked the printers.”