Virtually Undead

by Robert I. Katz

  Mostly, that meant James Garrett and Silas Munro, but neither man seemed happy to have him. Both had protested his presence. Both had been told, by both the Department Chairman and the Dean, to suck it up.

  Michael was assigned a series of routine tasks, mostly fine-tuning instruments and analyzing data, all for Robb, Dumont and Rosen. No problem. He knew how to organize a spreadsheet and was happy to do what he could.

  Within a couple of days, he fit right in with the junior members of the Division, perhaps not quite where his academic rank and history of funding deserved, but aside from his own ego, there was no point in making this an issue. He was an outsider. His presence was superfluous to the work they were doing and he wasn’t going to be here very long.

  The two days a week he spent taking care of patients were far more serious. You couldn’t fake operating on the brain. On Mondays, he saw patients in the clinic. They gave him a small office, a part-time secretary and assigned him an exam room. The nurses assisted all the physicians, at least five of whom staffed the clinic on a rotating basis.

  On Tuesday, he puttered around the lab, reviewing data, observing the various experiments in progress, helping out where he could. It quickly became apparent where the lines of demarcation lay. As expected, Silas Munro and James Garrett were the alpha dogs. Munro had three research techs: Sally Reeves, Jeff Gaines and Barry Howell. Garrett had four: Claude Pierson, Ed Newson, Ming Lee and Fred Sloane. All seven were stand-offish, spending very little time with, and saying almost nothing to the other members of the Division.

  “There are two ways you can approach this,” Greg West had said. “Be pleasant, helpful and congenial or be the exact opposite. If you’re pleasant, they’ll be more likely to talk to you. If you’re not, they’ll be more likely to stay away, which can give you a little more room to maneuver.” Greg West smiled. “My advice is to be yourself. See what’s going on. Get involved. Try hard to be a member of the team. You’re not an actor and if you pretend to be something that you’re not, you’re likely to trip yourself up.”

  Good advice, Michael thought.

  Michael had been a member of the medical/scientific community for many years. He was well acquainted with the phenomenon of the self-absorbed, socially inept genius, whose mind was so shot full of ideas and epiphanies they barely noticed the people around them and whose speech and actions tended at the best of times to be…inappropriate. Eddison Robb was a pretty good example of the type. Michael would have no trouble pretending to be just like them. Fun, probably, to let down all his inhibitions and let his freak flag fly. He toyed with the idea but decided that Greg West was right: be yourself.

  He tried to be a good colleague and though he was ignored at first, little by little, his co-workers warmed up to him. He was helpful. He offered a few bits of useful advice. He did what he was told and didn’t complain.

  The lab at Selwyn was filled with exotic looking constructions, bio-prostheses, most of them, boxes and consoles the use of which was not immediately apparent. A bust of Darth Vader and a black plastic replica of the Terminator’s skeletal, robotic hand sat high on a shelf.

  There were a lot of computers in the lab, he noted, from old, obsolete Macs to futuristic looking desktops, all supposedly linked to a server kept in James Garrett’s private lab.

  Finally, at 4:00 PM, he glanced at his watch, turned, and packed it in. “Girlfriend’s waiting for me,” he said. “Got to go.”

  On Wednesday, he assisted Craig McDowell, an old-timer, with a glioblastoma. They got all of it they could see but there was always more that you couldn’t see, lurking beyond detection. The patient was a sixty-three year old woman with two grown kids and four grandkids, a nice family. The operation might give her another year to spend with her nice family, and radiation to the brain might add another few months. George Gershwin, one of Michael’s boyhood idols, the composer of Rhapsody in Blue, Concerto in F and Porgy and Bess, had died from a glioblastoma just like this one.

  Thursday and Friday, it was back to the lab.

  Stephanie, unlike Michael, was on vacation, which meant that there was nothing she was required to do. She quickly grew bored watching TV, playing computer games and reading novels.

  When the lock clicked at 4:15 PM and Michael walked in, she looked up from a book whose pages she had been staring at and said, “Thank God. Let’s get going.”

  Michael looked at her. “Going where?”

  “Anywhere. I’ve been sitting around all day and I’m going crazy.”

  Her mood seemed to lift as soon as they left the apartment. The French Quarter was one big party, pretty much all year long. There were cafés, restaurants, shops, small winding streets, historic old buildings, speakeasy’s and jazz bands. They wandered around for an hour, holding hands, looking at the people. In the end, Michael found himself just a trifle disappointed. Old and historic as the neighborhood might be, a tourist trap was still a tourist trap, and the stuff that the shops were selling could have been purchased in any city in the country.

  He had made reservations at Mister B’s Bistro, supposedly one of the city’s shining lights of classic creole cuisine. It was a comfortable, casual looking place with a long bar, dark wood, padded seats and booths against the walls. They settled into a booth that let them look out on the street and ordered Sazeracs, an iconic New Orleans cocktail, then studied the menu.

  A cynic of a restaurant critic had once said that New Orleans had a thousand restaurants but only ten dishes. An exaggeration but the guy had a point. The menu tended toward gumbo, bread pudding, shrimp, crawfish, oysters and hot sauce. Their drinks arrived. The waiter stood by the table, a smile plastered on his face, waiting.

  “Sweet potato bisque, then the barbecued shrimp for me,” Michael said.

  “Oven roasted pork belly and duck spring rolls,” Stephanie announced.

  The waiter nodded and smiled. “Coming right up.”

  The drinks were cold, sweet and excellent. Michael sipped his Sazerac, feeling right at home for the first time since leaving New York.

  “So,” Stephanie said. “How’s it all going?”

  “Too soon to tell. It’s a lab.” He shrugged. “I’m still casing the joint.”

  Stephanie searched his face. “Something is bothering you. I can tell.”

  She was right. “I’ve been thinking about my future,” he said. He resisted the urge to frown. While it may have been true that the unexamined life was not worth living, Michael had been examining his life lately far more than seemed healthy. He was getting a little sick of examining his life.

  “Uh-oh.”

  He grudgingly smiled. “It occurs to me that I’ve allowed myself to be pulled in too many directions. I’ve spent the day in a lab full of devoted researchers, and you know what I’ve realized?”

  She took a small sip of her Sazerac, screwed up her face in thought, gave a small nod and swallowed. “Tell me.”

  “These guys spend all day, every day, doing science. I don’t. That’s only part of the trouble with being an academic physician. When it comes to the academic part, we’re competing with people who have a lot more time to spend on it than we do, and frankly, almost always, a lot more interest.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m a neurosurgeon. I’m a very good, highly respected neurosurgeon.”

  “If you do say so yourself.”

  Michael shrugged. “No sense being modest. I’m also a musician, and frankly, I like playing the piano a lot more than I like being a surgeon, and a hell of a lot more than I like doing research.”

  “But playing the piano doesn’t pay the bills.”

  “No,” Michael said. “It doesn’t pay the bills, but it’s what I like.” He sighed. “I am, to some extent, a researcher. I have some minimal history of funding and some decent, though not—as my new colleagues have pointed out—cutting edge papers. I don’t do research because I’m burning to discover new things. I do research because it’s one of the things you’re suppo
sed to do if you want to be successful as an academic physician.”

  The first course arrived. Stephanie dug into her pork belly. A smile spread across her face.

  “Anyway,” Michael said, “I just don’t care that much. I’m not going to be a world class researcher and win the Nobel Prize. Winning the Nobel Prize takes commitment. It takes single minded dedication, the sort of dedication that only comes with loving what you’re doing, and working at it full time, and I don’t.”

  She gave him a speculative look. “You’re not going to be a cop or an FBI agent, either, but here we are.”

  He grimaced. “No,” he said. “No, I’m not.”

  Chapter 20

  When Al Horowitz had proposed this venture, it had seemed like a lark, a chance to get away and do something different, to get out of the old rut. So now, here he was, and he found that he did not enjoy being in this lab, this school and this city, especially under false pretenses. He felt guilty about it.

  And then there was Stephanie. Michael liked having her around. He enjoyed being with her, except that for much of the time, he wasn’t with her. Stephanie was alone in a strange city and he was spying on one or more people who may or may not have been criminals, while pretending to be interested in their research and, oh, by the way, operating on a few brains.

  Meanwhile, back in New York, with Ralph Guthrie dead and Michael gone, the band had pretty much disbanded.

  Be yourself, Greg West had said. Okay, why not? He didn’t know how to infiltrate the bad guy’s underground lair. He didn’t know how to interrogate suspects. He had no idea how to ferret out secret information from unwilling criminals…but he had some ideas. It was time, Michael thought, to take advantage of his assets, such as they were.

  None of the labs or equipment belonged to the scientists to whom they were assigned. They belonged to the school. The private labs of both Silas Munro and James Garrett had keypads on the doors. In order to enter, it was necessary to punch in the right numbers in the right order.

  First, he needed the numbers.

  Michael made a phone call to Greg West, who dropped by that evening. “These”—he held up a strip of plastic bubbles with small devices inside, each barely larger than a pea—“are video-cameras, commonly used for surveillance.” He held up a control unit, about an inch long by half an inch wide, with a buttons in the center. “Press the red button on this unit and the cameras will start recording. Their capacity is limited, no more than five minutes, so pick the right five minutes.”

  “Cool,” Michael said.

  He arrived at the lab early the next morning and had time to scatter the cameras around the main lab before the others showed up. One-by-one, the post-docs arrived, punched in the keys on the locks to their respective labs, and entered. Michael pretended not to notice them, but he pressed the button on the controller each time, recording.

  Once again, he helped out, collating data, observing experiments in progress, setting up refractometers, voltage meters and water baths, and in one case, helping a wounded vet who had volunteered to try out a new, powered bio-prosthesis into and out of his wheelchair. At the end of the day, he left, leaving the tiny cameras in place. The next morning, he once again arrived before the others, gathered up the cameras, placed them in his briefcase and spent the day as instructed. Greg West met him at the apartment that evening. “I’ll have the data for you by tomorrow,” he said.

  Finally, Michael thought, something is happening. He didn’t know what, but something.

  Stephanie had wisely decided against spending another day cooped up by herself. She had taken a trolley over to the Garden District and signed up for a guided tour. The tour group had wandered past numerous historic mansions, only a few of which had actual gardens around them, strolled through Lafayette Cemetery, marveling at the elegant, slightly creepy family tombs, and had lunch at Atchafalaya. She had arrived back at the apartment an hour before Michael.

  “You want to go out?” Stephanie asked, once Greg West had left.

  Stephanie was looking particularly luscious this evening. She was wearing a short skirt and a summery blouse that left her arms and shoulders bare, with her long, dark hair trailing down over one shoulder. The material was not quite see-through. Michael looked at her and considered the question. “I’d just as soon stay in,” he finally said. “Eat a quiet meal at home. Relax…”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” She walked over and kissed him. “That sounds good.”

  It wasn’t breaking and entering, though Silas Munro and James Garrett might not have agreed with this assessment. The contract with the school that every employee signed specifically stated that there would be no expectation of privacy from the officers, managers and officials of Selwyn College of Medicine, which owned the lab and the building. This provision also applied to personal computers, lab equipment and electronic devices purchased by the school through the normal requisition and vending process.

  Still, this provision in the contract had always been regarded as pro-forma. Nobody expected that their work and provisions would be snooped on by the Comptroller, the Associate Dean or their minions.

  Michael, however, was not a representative of the school. The legality of what he was planning seemed…hazy. But where could things go wrong? The worst consequence would be to piss off Garrett and Munro, and so what if he did? If they fired him over this escapade, he would get back home sooner. Frankly, getting fired would not bother him in the slightest. There were no negative consequences here.

  Except getting murdered, of course. If Garrett and/or Munro had murdered ten gamers and sabotaged Remington Simulations, they might not hesitate to murder him, too. Probably not, though. Not for just sniffing around.

  Or so he tried hard to tell himself.

  “You’re sure about this?” Stephanie said.

  “Definitely.”

  She frowned. “You seemed so calm and laid-back when I met you. I didn’t realize how stubborn you could be.”

  He shrugged. “Now you do.”

  Michael was wearing sneakers, a black, long-sleeved polo shirt and blue jeans, casual, comfortable and, he imagined, the preferred uniform for breaking and entering, not that he planned on breaking anything.

  “I suppose it’s a turn-on, in a way.” Stephanie bit her lip and gave Michael a critical look. “The feminists can talk all they want about toxic masculinity but in the end, every woman I know wants a man who acts like a man, when the occasion calls for it.”

  He grinned at her. “Don’t wait up. I’ll be out until late, chasing the bad guys.”

  She sniffed. “Oh, sure. Just be careful, okay?”

  It was midnight. The party on Bourbon Street was still in full swing but most of the city was home, sleeping. Michael drove to the school, parked in the lot and took the elevator up to the lab. Tentatively, he opened the door. It was dark. He had expected as much but sometimes, people did work late, particularly obsessive PhD’s with no social life to distract them.

  He flipped on a light and considered the doors to both interior labs. Finally, he picked Munro’s. Silas Monro, after all, was the closest thing they had to a suspect, the one associated with Jason Grundy and Industrial Dream Machines. He punched in the numbers on the keypad. The door unlocked with a faint click. He entered and flipped on the light.

  He hadn’t known what to expect but the room still surprised him. None of the equipment he would have thought to find in a biolab was there. The room had no windows. Bank after bank of servers rose from the floor to the ceiling, filling the entire wall-space. All the servers were active, with random lights running across their consoles. A faint, electronic whir filled the room. An up to date Hewlett-Packard personal computer stood on a table in the center, equipped with two large monitors, a headset that resembled an Oculus Quest and two hand-held controllers. Colored cables trailed from the back of the computer and across the floor to one of the servers. The computer was on but the screens were both dark. Next to the computer
stood a stack of videogame disks. He pulled on a pair of gloves (feeling ridiculous, but why leave fingerprints?) and quickly looked through them: Minecraft, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare…a dozen others, including Virtually Undead.

  Spooky, he thought. He felt suddenly exposed. A tiny shudder ran up and down his spine.

  Two other doors allowed entrance into the room, one at the opposite end and one to the right side. Both were unlocked. He pushed one of these open and found himself in a room that was a little smaller but otherwise identical to the outside lab. He opened the other door, which, he was not surprised to find, led into James Garrett’s adjoining suite of rooms.

  All the rooms in both lab suites were dark. None, other than the computer room, contained anything unusual or seemed suspicious in the slightest.

  He exited through the server room and back into the main lab, closing the doors behind him, then turned off all the lights and left, breathing a sigh of relief.

  How much did the FBI care about being legal? Apparently, quite a lot. Greg West wanted to find whoever had murdered ten people, and had possibly disrupted the infrastructure of New York City, but he also wanted whatever they found (and what’s with this they stuff. Michael was the one taking the risks.) to be admissible in Court. There were always rumors of rogue agents and there were plenty of known, actual scandals in the FBI’s past, particularly on cases that might have had a political motivation, but in cases where a criminal might be apprehended, and where the actions of the arresting officials would be scrutinized, the feds apparently preferred to do things by the book.

  “The laws vary from state to state and are often a bit hazy. However, it is most definitely not legal to take either photographs or video recordings in areas where there is a clear expectation of privacy. This obviously includes locker rooms, dressing rooms, bathrooms and bedrooms where somebody is sleeping. Does it include a laboratory where proprietary research is taking place?” Greg West shrugged. “Yeah, I think it would. If you want to take pictures inside a locked room, you need a warrant.”